Family Matters
by Asika
Summary: Sometimes the past, with all its grudges and irritations, simply won't stay away no matter how far you run...and sometimes, at the end of it all, family is all you have to cling to.
1. Chapter 1

There was a considerable crowd in the lodge gift shop today, oohing and aahing over plush owls, bears, and wolves, kitschy precious gemstone necklaces, and shot glasses emblazoned with the logo for the Alfred Gonzala Natural Park. Mid-June was typically when the tourism season really kicked off, with hikers and campers swarming the park with snow-covered mountain peaks only a four hour drive away.

Standing at a small boot washing station at the side of the lodge was a black-haired woman armed with a wooden spatula-like contraption, attempting to scrape off the worst of the mud coating her boots and the lower hem of her pants; it had been unusually rainy and wet so far this year, she'd been told, and based on the daily slog she made from her cabin in to the lodge and back again she could definitely believe it. The extra moisture in the air made her work uniform almost unbearable to wear some afternoons, even if she went with the shorts instead of the pants; there was, she had to admit, the tiny benefit that mud didn't show up as badly on the khaki material and stains were easier to overlook, so she could slide by some when it came to laundry time...

There was a cluster of children watching her, giggling at each splat of cast off mud. She offered them little more than a tired grin before finally grabbing the hose and beginning to wash away the rest of it; she sent them all scattering and shrieking in delight with a few quick squirts from the hose before shutting off the water and stomping around to the back to enter the staff only back room.

The lodge wasn't very big, with the gift shop and front desk taking up the lion's share of building space; a single corner in the front was dedicated to local historic and natural displays, habitually ignored by tourists, and behind the front desk was a window that let one see into the staff break room area behind it with the other rooms blessedly out of view of the public.

The woman spent only a moment ducking into the break room to secure a cup of stale coffee before stepping back out of view and into a small office occupied by a fat, balding, older man who barely glanced up from his paperwork to regard her.

"'nother pleasant day in paradise eh Scholar?"

The woman smiled, swirling her coffee around in its little styrofoam cup. "As pleasant as it can be when you're slogging through mud daily. Speaking of mud, I hauled our missing hikers back to camp, but I've got some bad news for you."

The man sighed heavily and shook his head. "Shit, shit shit shit...well, lay it on me, Annie darling."

She took a drink before continuing. "Seems someone cut the fence up at Cadaver Falls. Again. I even found the snips this time."

He groaned and rubbed his face, his thumbs digging into the rolls beneath his chin. "You're shitting me... God dammit if I won't be happy when that funding gets in and we can put up a damn concrete and steel fence."

"Yeah, and then I can spend three days a week cleaning graffiti off it," she replied with a snort.

"I'd rather have this place covered in paint before corpses," he retorted, jabbing a finger in the air at her with every other word. "Do we have any other reports of anyone else missing? Damn rain is bogging everything down..."

"Not that I know of. Oh, and that reminds me - southern yellow trail got washed out again. When it finally manages to dry up some I'll take Mackey and head up there to pound the ties back into place and get markers back up."

"All right, all right, you do that, just let me know when you're heading out so I don't schedule you for trail riding. Anything else?"

Annie shook her head. "Nah, and if you don't have anything else for me I'm going to wade back home and get into some dry socks."

He held up a finger in a 'wait a moment' gesture before shoving himself to his feet and lumbering over to a multi-pocketed shelf that held staff time cards with a machine to punch them in and out mounted on the wall next to it; she waited silently as he yanked her time card free and read it over.

"Yeah, you take the rest of today off, you're inching toward sixty and I've been told keep everyone at a steady fifty."

"If Bossman thinks we can stay at fifty when we're eight staff shy during rush season, he's got another thing coming."

The fat man snorted as he slid her card into the slot on the punch machine, then stuffed it back into the shelf. "I keep telling him that, same as I keep telling him to push harder for that funding for that damn fence, but it's going to take another body in the river before anything gets done I figure."

She shrugged and drained her coffee, then crumpled the cup into a ball and lobbed it neatly into the trashcan next to his desk. "Do you have change for a fifty back here by chance?"

"I made the bank run yesterday, we sure as shit better."

As he waddled back to his desk she pulled her wallet from her back pocket and removed a rumpled fifty, smoothing it slightly before handing it over. "Thanks, Sandy bitches at me if I give her anything bigger than a twenty and I want a drink for the road."

A moment later she was circling around to the front of the lodge, winding her way through the milling visitors to retrieve a bottle of cream soda from one of the coolers; there was a line to wait in and it was a good fifteen minutes before she'd reached the register and plunked the bottle down in front of a frazzled looking, mousey woman.

"You'd better not-" Sandy began, falling silent when the other waved a ten dollar bill around.

"I planned ahead, you owe me one."

It didn't take long to ring up the one soda and count out change - it actually took longer to ease her way through the crowd toward the door, chatting with and greeting people as she moved; there was always something about seeing the badge on her shirt or the patches on her sleeves that made tourists attach themselves to her and pepper her with inane or outright stupid questions about the park and wildlife.

She was reaching for the doorknob when the door swung open in front of her, and the pit of her stomach plummeted through the floor when through the door walked a man; he was tall and lanky, wearing aviators and a slouch hat, worn boots, a vest with bullets tucked in a neat line into a pocket.

He looked right at her and time seemed to freeze for a moment before his gaze moved on to roam around the crowd; biting on her lower lip until she tasted blood, she stumbled back and away and for a brief moment a cluster of people exiting cut off her view of the man as they moved between the two of them. She took that moment to quickly push her way back to the front desk, almost falling over it as she leaned in toward the mousey woman.

"Evacuate the park," she hissed.

The other woman stared at her blankly. "What-"

They both looked up as the man suddenly appeared behind Annie; she stumbled away, forcibly dragging two very confused customers with arms full of t-shirts with her, shoving them behind her as she squared off against the man.

The man's expression went from warm friendliness to confusion. "You sure have a funny way of greeting old friends, sheila."

She swallowed hard and inhaled slowly. "You're three days early."

He shrugged, crossing his arms and giving her a mildly confused look. "Didn't think you'd mind..."

Annie shifted her gaze back to Sandy behind the desk. "Evacuate this park. NOW," she snarled, hand going for a pocket even as the man lunged for her, lightning-fast.

* * *

With a grunt Engineer pushed back from the workbench and stretched arms over his head, fingers splayed and groaning as muscle began unknotting themselves. "This damn thing..."

"Another issue, sir?"

Engineer let his arms drop, scratching at his stomach; his workshop was unusually messy at current - there were various (but organized) piles of wiring, circuitry and boards, palm-sized metal squares of various materials. Engineer himself sat a workbench with wiring and what looked like a partially assembled mechanical leg covering the bench's surface. Not far from him, sitting atop what was probably the only surface in the workshop relatively free of clutter, was a robot body with a detached head, no legs, and only the left arm.

The head itself was sitting near the body, of course, but rather than being connected to the body it was hooked up to a tiny computer with its screen angled to face the man sitting nearby. At the moment the screen was showing a technical readout of the leg the man was working on, specifically with the wiring around the ankle joint highlighted.

Engineer reached over to pull the screen closer. "Not really an issue, just a bit of frustration. Trying to get this wiring in the right place is like trying to thread a needle with a pickup - it's doable, but I don't see how your crazy creator managed it with all the twitching he did."

The robot's eyes flicked a few times, a sign of amusement from the bot that Engineer had grown used to seeing periodically. "Yes, my creator was...something of an eccentric. Do I need to enlarge the area for your viewing clarity?"

Engineer waved a hand. "Nah, I see where everything needs to go, it's just a matter of actually getting it settled."

"I see." The robot's eyes went dark a moment before coming back on. "I would like to possess legs again."

"Yeah, I know," Engineer sighed. "It's not like I'm purposely keeping you hobbled but you'd be surprised at how fragile some bits of you are, or how darn overly complicated he made parts of you." He stretched again and rotated his neck, a few soft pops sounding. "I'd like to repair you as close as I can to your original plans, but I think we're rapidly reaching a point where I'm going to scrap his plans and use a few of my own in their place."

"...I find the thought of having a body that is not my original to be very odd indeed," the robot said after a moment. "I suppose I will become accustomed to it in time, much like I have become accustomed to seeing my head beside my own body."

With a chuckle Engineer stood and used the toe of a boot to shove his stool back under the bench. "I'll get you fixed eventually."

"I do not doubt that, but being able to walk again is a goal I look forward to."

Engineer let out a sound that was halfway between a hum and a grunt as he began disconnecting the head from the tiny computer, its screen going black as the last cords were removed; it didn't take long to reconnect the head to the body and pull the body up into a sitting position, closing the small panel on the back of the neck. "There we go."

The robot rotated its head back and forth, almost a perfect imitation of what Engineer had done only moments before. "Oh, I cannot feel my arm."

"Uh, hang on a second-" Engineer opened the panel again and re-aligned the wires. "How about now?"

The robot responded by lifting its left arm and waggling its fingers. "Much better. I suppose there really is a short in that wire somewhere."

"Yeah, just another problem to track down," Engineer chuckled. "I still think you're in pretty good shape all things considered."

"Indeed I am." The robot's head turned to survey the room. "May I make a request?"

"What's that?"

"Cease attempting to fix what was there before, and simply fix me in whatever manner you can. I can adjust to a new body, but I want to be whole once more."

Engineer raised an eyebrow at that. "You seem to be in a pretty big hurry to get mobile again."

The bot's head turned toward him. "If you lost your legs, would you not dream of having them again?"

"I'm not sure you can dream."

"Figurative speech or not, I do not care for being an invalid. I have persisted as a desk ornament for over a year now. I know you have been trying to fix me and I do not suspect you of ill will toward me, but...a year has passed since I last moved under my own power."

Engineer crossed his arms with a sniff, looking thoughtful. "...yeah, I guess it has been a year, hasn't it?"

"I estimate it to be as such. My internal clock was damaged so I am factoring in for lost time."

"Well howabout that. Guess you've made it to your first birthday then, robot."

"My first what?"

Engineer began straightening a pile of circuit boards. "Birthday - day you made your first appearance in the world. For humans, its the day we were born...not sure what we could call it for you since you were put together rather than bred."

There was a very faint undertone of buzzing from the robot for a moment followed by the bot's eyes flickering rapidly - a sign it had tried accessing blocks of memory that were either damaged or gone entirely. "Interesting. I have no recollection of when I was first activated. I now find myself curious about the exact date of my creation. Are birthdays important milestones for humans?"

"Marks each year we've managed to make it through without dying, yeah, also lets us prove we're old enough to do things like drink or vote."

"Interesting. I find it fascinating to compare what I know of humans to what I learn...it poses the questions of why did my creator create me with this knowledge, but not that knowledge? Why do I know of this but not of this related subject?"

Engineer shook his head with a bit of a grin. "I've told you before, your creator was a bit of a nut job."

The eyes flickered. "Yes, so you have. Now that I know other humans for comparison I can see the inherent differences and also understand what is considered 'normal.'"

"Ah, I wouldn't really consider myself or my team the baseline comparison for 'normal,'" Engineer chuckled. "Remind me to stick you in a room with Soldier for a few hours, you'll get what I mean."

"Am I old enough to partake in human rituals of drinking and voting?"

Engineer laughed. "No, not even close. Humans need to be twenty one to drink and eighteen to vote. There's even laws that set out what age you need to be to learn to drive and run for office."

"...it seems strange to me that age is the basis for law."

"Not all laws, robot, just some of them." He picked up a few useless circuit boards from the pile and walked them over to the trashcan as the robot fell silent for several moments.

"...when do humans receive their names?"

Engineer chuckled, tossing the boards and bending to tie the trash bag shut. "When they're born their parents name them."

"What if the parent never names the child?"

"I can't say I've ever heard of that happening. Whoever serves as a parent, whether that's a person or a government institution, they give the kid a name."

"Should I have a name?"

Engineer glanced over at the bot, shrugging as he lifted the tied bag from the can and sat it near the door. "I guess if you want one, or you're tired of everyone just calling you robot."

The robot's eyes went dark for several minutes, long enough that Engineer began to wonder if there was another shorted wire he wasn't aware of; finally, the lights came back on and the robot looked over at him.

"I think I would like a name."

Now it was Engineer's turn to go quiet, moving back to a bench and picking up a roll of wire, idly patting the palm of a hand with it. "Well, let's see...you have anything in mind?"

"I do not know. How are humans named?"

"Some parents pick the name out before birth, some wait to see the baby before they pick a name. There's folks who name their kids after family members - that's how you get people named William Jr. or Thomas the Third - and then you get the odd ones who pick a name at random or make one up. There's no set way on how names are given out."

"Do names mean anything?"

Engineer scratched the back of his head. "Sometimes, I guess. If you look at it from a literal point of view mine means a small valley, but I guess if you're superstitious you can pick a name based on some archaic meaning or portent. Why?"

"Merely trying to understand the importance of names, if I am to choose one."

Engineer chuckled and as silence fell again he made his rounds in the workshop, putting things back into a semblance of order. When things were finally organized and clean again he wandered to the door, picking up the full trash bag and then reaching for and pausing with his hand over the light switch. "Take the night and think about it, pick something you like."

He flipped the light off, then back on again as the robot quietly replied with "Is Victor a name?"

"Victor?" Engineer turned around and leaned against the door frame.

The robot was looking down at its body - it was of course missing both legs and an arm, and its torso was still scratched and dented in those places Engineer hadn't tended to yet. It gently prodded a finger into the dent that was over a bullet hole the Engineer had patched. "Victor. It refers to someone who has won or triumphed over a challenge. Where you and the others destroyed my brothers, I alone survived. Is victor appropriate for a name?"

Engineer scratched his cheek, mulling that over. "It can be, and I guess if you want to use that train of thought there to justify it..."

"Is it inappropriate?"

"No, just...kind of odd, even for you."

"Ah, I am reminding you that I possess human characteristics?"

"No, you're reminding me that you over-think a lot of things."

The robot's eyes darkened and stayed that way. "Is that not a human characteristic?"

Engineer snorted. "It is one of our endearing habits as a species, yes. Look, I'll be back in the morning - you keep thinking on this name thing and make sure you're sure you want to be called what you pick, all right?" He flipped the light off and shut the door behind him, locking it and then heading down the hallway.

There were conversations that sometimes managed to subtly unnerve him when it came to that damn robot...some days it was like talking to a child and others it was like talking to a man trapped in a metal shell, and considering how the robot had come to be...

He just had to keep reminding himself that it was robot, that was all. Let the thing have a name if it wanted, what could it really hurt?


	2. Chapter 2

By the time the sound of the approaching engine had reached Sniper the car was already in view, making its way up the lonely canyon road toward the base that was nestled back in a dead end, carved partially into the rock around it.

Sniper wasn't too fond of this base - he didn't like being stuck back in a dead end, didn't care for the tall rock walls on either side of them that were tall enough that even sitting on the tallest point of the base didn't let him see out over them. If he wanted to see the full scope of the land around them he had to climb to the top of the canyon and that presented its own set of problems, chief among them being the wind and all the sand and grit it kicked up; he'd started finding tiny pits in his aviators and knew the same would happen to his scope if he left the cap off, leaving him to make do with a pair of binoculars if he needed to see something a bit closer and that meant juggling another item along with trying to get his gun up, the cap off the scope, and ready to fire if he had to.

With that in mind he supposed it was a good thing that lately the robot attacks had begun to die down. Mann had actually stuck to his cease fire offering and the mercenaries had spent those months preparing for what they assumed was going to be an immediate attack and attempt to overwhelm them...and the attack that had eventually happened was less than impressive. Mann wasn't even employing upgraded robots - it was as though Zane and his...improvements...had never even happened.

In hindsight that was a bit of shame; before Zane had come into the picture their fights against the machines had become routine and fairly boring. The insane man's upgrades had injected a sense of fear and thrill back into the battle, but now that Mann was back at the helm of things it seemed he was unable (unlikely) or unwilling (most likely) to use Zane's designs...and now he wasn't even attacking them as frequently as he once had, almost like he too was getting bored with it all.

Mann's seeming lack of interest in pursuing his little war was the reason why they were stationed at this base at current. This place was easily defended (provided the robots didn't just drop in on them from off the walls) and was also more or less equally close to three separate Mann Co. buildings - at the first sign of robots they could quickly get moving and relocate if they had to.

Problem was, they hadn't had to in awhile.

The sound of the approaching car had actually roused Sniper from an accidental mid-afternoon nap; he hadn't even realized he'd dozed off until he woke up and had to take a moment to remember where he was - he was on the roof, not up on the canyon walls. Right.

After rubbing dirt from the corner of an eye he stood and pulled his hat lower as he eyed the oncoming vehicle. It was the right size, and shade of maroon, to be that little four-door car Miss Pauling had been driving recently.

Raising his rifle he peered through the scope and could only see a glare off the windshield - though he did confirm the color without a doubt - so he sat back down and waited a moment or two for the car to get fully within the shadow of the canyon walls, then peered down at it again.

He could make out Pauling's hands on the steering wheel, but there was a...what was that? Passenger-side he could see -

Pauling had a passenger? Why? And, who?

He capped the scope, clipped the rifle's strap on and let it swing to his back, then moved over to the narrow metal ladder that he'd climbed up to get up here in the first place. If Pauling was bringing someone with her then likely things were about to get interesting again, if only for a little while. Either way he'd welcome the interruption.

* * *

Pauling didn't stay long - she rarely did anymore - as after only a few minutes she was speeding back down the road, leaving nine very confused members of Red in her wake, and a single member of Blu.

Sniper recognized him, of course; he was that blonde Medic, a fairly chatty fellow back when they'd 'met' at the dam, and with the nine Reds arrayed in front of him he was visibly nervous.

He was stripped of any indication of team - he had on a white shirt with no insignia or symbol designating him as a Medic either - and all he had with him was his medigun with its pack and an additional knapsack that Sniper could only assume held personal items.

Aside from dropping off the Medic and a small package of personal mail, the only over thing Pauling had done was press a large, thick envelope into Spy's hands without a word of explanation before she'd gotten back into the car and driven off.

As of yet Spy had not opened it, nor had he commented on the fact that they were now, apparently, a team of ten - Blu's Medic, according to Pauling, was being temporarily assigned to assist Red, but Pauling had phrased it in a matter-of-fact manner that left no room for argument or discussion, and then she'd just...left.

For several moments longer they simply stared at one another before Engineer sniffed and cleared his throat. "Well partner, I guess let's get you settled in. You ever been to this base before?"

The Blu shook his head. "No, I am afraid not. And, I understand you have a close-knit team dynamic...I will strive not to be disruptive. This reassignment came as something of a shock, and I was not given time to think on the ramifications, nor was I given choice in the matter."

"Yes, well," Spy said quietly, finally speaking up. "Welcome to the team, ah...Doctor. It would seem we will need to assign you a designation so it will be clear which medic we are addressing."

His words were directed at the Blu but his attention was on the envelope in his hands; if he noticed the glances the others were giving it he gave no indication but after his greeting he turned on a heel and strode into the base, leaving the others to tend to their sudden newest member.

There was a scattering of muttered conversation before anyone bothered to move; the Blu seemed overly relieved when at last Engineer gestured to him and turned to head back into the base, the others parting to let the man through before heading back inside themselves. Sniper hung back however, Medic standing by him, until it was only the two of them remaining outside. "What do you think this is about?"

Medic's brow furrowed. "I...could not say. It does not give me much confidence in my job security, however."

Sniper snorted. "Oh please, like you'd get canned now, not after the headway you've made on Zane's bloody insanity."

With a grin Medic reached up to pull his glasses off and polish them on a sleeve. "Ah, yes...such beautiful and raw insanity. It is truly a delight to read his work - despite his madness he had an incredible understanding of the human form, I have even learned a thing or two."

"Just so long as you're not thinking of turning us into machines."

"No, nothing like that, though I do still see the man's reasoning in such an endeavor. What I refer to is tissue regeneration and rerouting of nerve clusters, intricate ways muscles connect to bone and surrounding tissues, that sort of thing. His knowledge of such inner matters is astounding, even if it was discovered in his determination to meld man with machinery."

"Gee, I wonder why he went to such lengths," Sniper said dryly, "the bloke was only rotting apart."

Medic perched his glasses back onto his nose. "Yes, that also was covered in detail...he has some very fascinating procedures for treating septic flesh, some of which I question how they did not kill him outright. He was quite bold in experimenting on himself."

"The man was nuts, maybe he didn't care."

The German shrugged and began to walk to the door. "Regardless. I suppose I should properly greet my counterpart and assess his knowledge. We cannot afford an inexperienced Medic on the field."

"You do that," Sniper muttered. He gave the man a few minutes to head inside, then went inside as well and headed for Spy's quarters.

The door was locked - not unusual - but there wasn't a response when he knocked. Frowning, Sniper crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. "All right mate, what's the deal?"

For several minutes longer there was silence, then Sniper heard the faint click of the lock disengaging; when the door wasn't opened for him he opened it himself and stepped inside to see Spy across the room sitting at his desk, the room dark save for the light from a single desk lamp in front of him.

"What'd she give you?"

Arranged on the desk were various newspaper clippings, bent and curling from having been folded into the envelope, and a single white sheet of paper with lines of text on it that Sniper couldn't read from where he stood. He watched Spy carefully smooth one of the clippings out before moving only his eyes to look up at him.

"Sniper, I did not know you had taken a vacation recently."

"...what? What are you going on about?"

As Spy held up a clipping Sniper crossed the room and got to the desk, then blinked in surprise when he realized what Spy was holding.

The clipping was a picture, and the subject of the picture was a tall male wearing a hat and clothing identical to Sniper's; the picture was grainy, probably from a security camera, and coupled with the imprecise printing of news ink on the softer paper the male's face wasn't clear, but-

"-bloody hell, that-"

"-is not you, no, because we all know you have been here with us. This picture also originated in Colorado," Spy said quietly. "Someone is, however, impersonating you, and it appears they slaughtered a crowd of people in a park."

Sniper grabbed the next clipping Spy offered him and bent to hold it under the lamp's light. The article's headline was in all caps, MADMAN WIPES OUT TOURISTS, CAMPERS, STAFF! and he skimmed the writing, frowning heavily.

"'-unprovoked attack-' '-brutal dismemberment with several of the corpses incomplete and missing limbs' '-assailant unknown and still at large-' what the bloody hell? Who the hell is going around pretending to be me and killing?"

"And in Colorado, no less," Spy murmured. He propped his elbows on the table and laced his fingers together in front of his face, silent and staring ahead.

Sniper checked the other clippings and saw they were variations of the same story with the same grainy picture of his imposter included with them, all of them from different newspapers but all detailing the same senseless slaughter. He let them fall back to the desk, looking over at Spy in time to see the man calmly folding the white sheet of paper in half, delicately using his fingertips to sharply crease the fold.

After a moment of simply...letting what he'd read sink in, he lifted his hat to run a hand through his hair. "Ah piss... I know I've got folks who don't like me - or any of us - around here, but I've never even been that far north, who would even know who I am up there?"

"Who indeed..." Spy muttered, pushing himself to his feet in one smooth motion as he tucked the paper inside his jacket. "And it seems we are not a team of ten, YOU are a team of nine. I have been tasked with traveling to Colorado."

"You're not an errand boy, you're an assassin. That woman has more snoops than she knows what to do with, why send you?"

Spy came out from around the desk and strode across the room to open a fine wooden case sitting atop a low bookshelf. "Information gathering is also my specialty, and it seems a package of the Administrator's went missing around the same time as the attack." He swung the case open silently on well-oiled hinges and removed a revolver from it, giving it a once-over before slipping it inside his jacket. "She has ordered me to locate the package and any information on the attack that I can acquire."

Sniper's response was cut off as Spy turned to look at him from over a shoulder. "And, by the way - I was also instructed to tell no one of my mission."

"Then why let me in?"

"Because the enemy wears your face, my friend," Spy continued, moving about the room to collect his tools. "It is my suggestion you tell no one, and also do not stray into town for the time being. This may not yet be national news but there is little sense in taking unnecessary risks."

* * *

Ordinarily he might have driven the whole distance, or taken a plane, but he made the decision to equally balance speed and preparation time during his trip north, opting to travel by train.

He had made it a point to purchase a ticket for a personal compartment and once they'd embarked he'd indulged himself a bit in simply sitting and watching the scenery go by beyond his window as he smoked in silence; truth be told traveling by train was his preferred method of travel as he greatly enjoyed the views from the window and found that idly watching the world slide by had a sort of meditative, calming quality to it, and the quiet that came with it helped focus his mind when he turned his attention from the outside world to whatever task had been set before him.

He finished his cigarette and gently ground the smoldering stub into the ashtray, then once he was certain no porters or attendants would wander by to knock at his door Spy again brought out the envelope and its contents and propped up the tiny table built into the arm of the couch he sat on, spreading the clippings across it as well as setting a few on the seat beside him.

First he studied the grainy picture of their Sniper "twin." It had been taken from a camera perched somewhere near the ceiling, giving a near isometric view of the impersonator. Spy assumed the picture had been cropped for the sake of print as the man was framed near-perfectly in the center of the photograph so he could only guess at where in the room the camera may have been mounted and what its purpose was beyond 'general security measures' implied by the fact it was a security camera. He only briefly lamented not knowing where the camera's location was - a lot of detail could have been inferred about motives and avenues of attack based on where this man had been heading when he was captured on film...not to mention hinting at what kind of package Spy was looking to track down.

Admittedly he had a sudden bout of amusement as a thought struck him: just over a year ago he had been sent on a similar assignment, along with Sniper, to find a courier and a package, which had started off quite the interesting adventure that had almost gotten himself killed multiple times (with death also brushing uncomfortably close to a few of his teammates as well). Briefly that familiar feeling of annoyance rose as he thought back to those days; Spy had suspected that their then-guest, a young woman named Shiloh MacKenna, was being set up or used in some manner by their Administrator beyond the stated purpose of baiting their adversary out of hiding. When all was said and done Miss Pauling had rushed Miss MacKenna away, too quickly for Spy to have begun fully focusing on teasing out details on possible connections between the old woman and MacKenna...it was a mystery left unsolved and was something he had thought on often when he was alone and had time to do so.

There was a small part of him that still wondered where MacKenna had gone, what she was doing, and if anything from that little fiasco had caught up to her; as adaptive as MacKenna had proven herself to be the Administrator played games on levels far above her, possibly far above even Spy's level of skill, and that she'd been rushed away so quickly had only deepened Spy's suspicions that there was something at play that they were not seeing. He did not consider himself a paranoid man, but he had the strangest feeling that whatever he was not seeing would somehow circle around to bite them in the future...it was not a comfortable feeling to have.

The train eased around a bend and Spy blinked, then reached for another cigarette. He had certainly let his mind take a tangent, hadn't he? Closing his eyes he breathed out slowly - he had a mystery in front of him to focus on, rehashing an old one that he had no answers for was not going to assist him in solving this one. Again he let himself study the scenery beyond his window and let his mind go still once more, finishing his smoke before picking up the picture again.

To an untrained eye - or, to one who did not know or spend time around the man - the person in the photo would easily pass as a twin to Sniper if one went only on the details the picture provided. After a moment or two Spy peeled off a glove and rubbed the paper between his fingers; it was thin and the paper was of low quality, likely indicative of a small newspaper with limited circulation and revenue. It would be difficult to tell if the grainy appearance to the photo was truly from the original picture or from a cheap printing job as there was also the unknown variable of the quality of the camera that had captured it in the first place.

Only a handful of the other clippings included a photograph and it was the same one as the one he'd just looked at; out of those one was smaller so the picture appeared sharper, but the size made the facial features of the subject rather indistinct... He sat the picture aside, momentarily satisfied with his study of it.

The articles themselves were written in a sensational manner with the facts dressed up like a dime store novella; Spy began to read and sort through them again, noting the common threads in each as well as slight differences in the wording - the reporters who penned these articles likely received the same terse, simplistic release of information from the same source of law enforcement which did not seem to include names of anyone involved - survivor, investigator, or otherwise.

That there was no mention of survivors made him wonder exactly how big of a headache this was going to be, as his little sheet of instructions had only a few lines on it but one of those had instructed him to "ask for the Scholar."

WHO this Scholar was was unknown. Silently Spy removed the white sheet from his pocket and read over its lines again.

'Spy - travel to the following address. A phone call was made. A package has gone missing. Investigate. Ask for the Scholar.'

If this Scholar was at this park and had not survived the attack then his only clearly indicated starting point was gone...and then there was the mention of a phone call - what sort of phone call? Were facts being withheld? Knowing the Administrator that was highly likely, so the question then became who made the phone call and why? Had this Scholar made the call and if so, were they alive?

Or did this perhaps mean the Administrator had made the call herself to inquire and had received no answer, prompting her to send him instead?

He slid his glove back on and rubbed his chin, letting his gaze wander back to the window and to the view beyond it. The desert was rapidly giving way to greener vistas...at least with this little errand came the perk of getting out of the heat and into more appealing surroundings.

There would be a car left for him at the station, then a three hour drive before he reached the town of Cedar Ridge, the only town within a twenty mile radius of the Alfred Gonzala Natural Park. Once in town he could question the locals and see what could be gathered from them regarding the attack - word traveled fast in small towns, and a lot could be gleaned from seemingly simple gossip.

Spy gathered the articles and placed them back into the envelope, then stood from the couch and moved to the small armchair that sat on the opposite side of the compartment, settling into it comfortably and reclining a bit. He had several hours yet to go before they reached the station, he might as well relax as best he could before then.

At least the view was lovely.

* * *

"So why are you really here?"

The Blu medic looked up from where he was carefully emptying the knapsack's contents into the footlocker at the end of the bunk he'd claimed. "I'm sorry?"

Engineer crossed his arms and leaned against the door frame, smiling easily at the man. "I'm just curious is all. Were you told why you were being reassigned?"

The man's expression faltered slightly, Engineer detecting the briefest hint of apprehension before the pleasantly neutral expression came back. "I suppose I will be asked that frequently."

"Oh, most definitely. We're not a nosy bunch by habit, and I'm not trying to be rude, but this isn't like the old woman. She doesn't even let us talk about Blu, or interact with you, or anything of that sort, and here you are. Why aren't you with your team? Seems a bit funny, you know?"

The man stared down into the footlocker, inhaling and exhaling slowly. "Yes, it is."

"Were you told not to say anything?"

"No, I could speak of it if I wish. I am just not certain I wish to."

"Why's that?"

The man sighed again, then moved to sit on the edge of the bunk. "My team does not need me, because there is no team."

Engineer raised an eyebrow at that. "Come again?"

"Blu. Is has been dissolved - the contracts of my teammates have been ended. I am reassigned to Red until my team is repopulated."

Now Engineer's eyebrows shot up in surprise. "...you're serious?"

"I am. After the events during which my team and I were prisoners, when we had returned to our own base we were administered psychological evaluations. My team...did not pass them. I did. I alone remain of Blu, the others were dismissed."

Engineer was silent for a long moment, mouth slightly agape, before he reached up to scratch at a cheek. "Psychological...has that woman MET any of us? Ain't a damn one of us that'd pass one of those things at this point."

The Medic smiled. "Ah, yes, I share the same sentiment."

"How'd you pass it?"

"I do not know. I answered all questions posed to me honestly and with detail. I do know I am the only one of my team that was not suffering nightmares after our treatment at the hands of that madman. The others were not deemed mentally sound enough to be trusted with the duties our job requires." He ran a hand through his hair, leaving it rumpled and standing up in its wake. "You would think I would be just as unsound of mind as they, yes? I suffered the same."

"Maybe. Not everyone handles the job the same, I'd reckon."

"I suppose," the man sighed. "I do not see what makes me any different from my comrades, but I yet remain." He went silent a moment, then looked up at Engineer. "As I have said, I will strive to not disrupt your team dynamic."

Engineer shrugged. "I wouldn't worry about it too much, it's your team now too."

"Yes, it is, isn't it?" He pushed himself off the bunk, stored his empty knapsack in on top of the rest of this things in the footlocker, then gently shut it. "I suppose I should become acquainted with my new team, yes?"

"Probably a good idea. What's your background?"

"Oh. I was a police officer before attending medical school. I am trained in small arms as well as hand to hand combat, and I am very knowledgeable in conventional medicine and surgery techniques. This...medigun, it is quite a marvel is it not?"

Engineer chuckled. "I bet Medic will be happy to hear he's got a fan."

The other's eyes widened. "He was the one who created it?" Engineer nodded, and the man's face lit up. "Oh yes, I believe I will enjoy my time among your team - ...our team. That...will take some getting used to," he added after a moment.

With a gesture Engineer stepped out of their barracks, the Medic following along; this guy had to be older than he looked, if he'd been a policeman and also gotten through medical schooling...was hard not to look at him and see an eager kid though. "I'm sure you'll find a way to fit in, and if not I guess you could say it's good you'll only be here temporarily."

"That is true. Perhaps I should not get TOO comfortable in this assignment."

They walked the halls with Engineer pointing out where the locker room was, where the training room and central meeting rooms were, and ended his little tour at the mess hall, pausing before he pushed the door open.

"Spy had a point when he said we should probably have something to call you, so you and Medic know who we're shouting at."

"Mmm. I suppose you may use my first name for the time being. Gunther."

"All right then, Gunther, how about a beer?"


	3. Chapter 3

The first thing he had done once reaching Cedar Ridge was purchase a local newspaper and map, find a cafe, and settle into a booth to thumb through the pages and listen in on the chatter from the people around him.

As he had expected the conversations were all based on the attack at the park and, according to the newspaper's date and the articles it contained, the attack itself had occurred four days ago. This little revelation now had Spy questioning why the old woman hadn't immediately moved on finding her missing package - had the attack been so swift no one had had time to react? If so, then maybe the call had not come from someone at the park and she'd only found out about it when she'd called her contact, perhaps because said contact was late in performing a delivery or even a pick up.

It did not take long to glean all he could from the newspaper - as he'd predicted it was a small paper, poorly printed on inferior paper - and over a cup of coffee he sat and listened, picking out details from the chatter around him. It wasn't until he heard someone mention a supposed survivor that he focused all his attention on eavesdropping on that particular conversation.

"-left someone alive then?"

"S'what they were saying over the radio. Not saying what hospital they took her to but they got an eyewitness if she wakes up."

"What do you mean if she wakes up?"

"'parently whoever it is ain't doing well."

Spy shot a furtive glance over his shoulder at the men who were speaking - they were two older men, both gray-haired, bearded, and wearing trucker's hats, sitting in a booth with an empty booth between Spy and them.

Well now, that was interesting, if someone had indeed survived... But, over what radio had they heard this? Spy had kept his radio on and tuned to a local frequency in the hopes of catching some new detail on a broadcast but hadn't heard anything more than what he already knew.

He slid from the booth and stood, smoothing hands down the front of his jacket; before entering the cafe he had used his disguise kit to alter his appearance a tad - not a full disguise but a collection of small changes, like altering his hair color and facial structure and cheapening his suit's appearance along with activating the voice modulator hidden within the kit. Coupled with the props he had on him...he supposed it was time to see how friendly the locals were.

"Excuse me, gentlemen," he said as he approached, his French accent gone and a more Midwestern accent in place. "I couldn't help but overhear you, allow me to introduce myself-"

As the two gray beards at the booth glanced up to him he reached into his jacket to remove a rather official-looking badge in a sleek black leather case, flashing it at them and giving them enough time to register what it was before he snapped the case shut and tapped the corner of it against a palm with a friendly smile. "-Detective John Pastor. I am a private investigator hired by one of the families of...well, they are hoping their missing loved one is not a victim."

The two men glanced between themselves and, Spy noted with a bit of amusement, sat up straighter in his presence.

"Well uh, nice to meet you sir. Detective you said? You do look like a city folk - not from around here that's for sure."

Spy kept his smile steady. "Yes, I'm quite a ways away from my usual stomping grounds, I only just arrived this evening and haven't had time to contact anyone within the investigation just yet to let them know I've arrived. Your conversation caught my attention because, to my knowledge? No list of names has been officially released. Where'd you hear about a survivor, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Jonesy here's got a scanner," the man on the left said as he jabbed a finger in the air at his companion. His hat was painfully orange and emblazoned with the logo of some sports team, probably a local high school if the quality was any indication. "He says he heard 'em talking about fishing someone still alive out of a pile of dead ones, hauled 'er off to Our Lady's Hospital over in...where was it, Pine Heights?"

Orange Hat's companion snorted and leaned back to toss an arm over the back of the booth seat. "Yeah, but that's all I heard. Don't got any names for you, Detective."

Spy nodded at them. "I'm sure if they're broadcasting that then there should be a list ready for public release soon. I do thank you both, you've given me a bit of hope that my trip here won't be a wash. It's...never exactly promising to not get any names when you're in this line of work."

They nodded at him, Orange Hat reaching up to shove a hand at him; Spy shook it and wished them a good evening, then paid for his coffee and left.

So...someone had survived after all but wasn't in the greatest shape. That was promising in a sort of macabre way, and as he got back into his car he turned the disguise off and referenced the map he'd purchased. Pine Heights appeared to be thirty miles further out than Cedar Ridge and a bit further north and was also a much larger town than Cedar Ridge.

Seeking the lone survivor could possibly end this little errand quickly...possibly, anyway - it would of course depend on whether the survivor was even able to speak, or speak coherently. At the very least it would allow him time needed to devise how best to approach the park without being seen by law enforcement.

The park seemed to have only one main road that led to its central offices that then splintered into multiple back roads if one was instead heading to a campsite or trail head; Spy used the tip of a finger to gently trace the main road's route - if there were still authorities at the crime scene or watching for possible suspects they would no doubt be arrayed on both the main and the side roads. While he had no qualms about posing as an officer of the law, getting wrapped in bureaucratic red tape would only slow him down.

With a sigh born out of annoyance and underlaid with a touch of exhaustion, Spy started the car and left Cedar Ridge to head north to Pine Heights. He would start with the survivor and see where that led.

* * *

The memories from the last several days were hazy and tinged with pain and fear, and as she again found herself fighting off another wave of dizziness and...floatiness? It was as good a descriptor as any, as it felt like she was at the bottom of a pool looking up - the world above her rippled and swam in unsettling ways, there was a pressure on her chest that made breathing uneasy, and her focus continuously slipped away even as she fought to bring back a sense of clarity.

Had it truly only been days? With her mind so scattered it was hard to tell, but finally, at long last it seemed, she opened her eyes and managed to focus them on what was directly in front of her.

There was something very near to her face and its strange patterning confused her for a moment before other bodily sensations began to wake up and her brain began to properly sort them out; the pressure on her chest was due to her being laid on her stomach, her head turned partially to the side and her nose almost buried in the pillow beneath it. The patterning she was trying to puzzle out was just the threads on the pillowcase, nothing more, and recognizing this she tried to turn her head a bit more to try and spot something a bit further away.

There was the edge of the bed, and beside it was a small table that was made of a dark wood and polished to a gleam that momentarily made her eyes go unfocused. Lifting her head from the pillow immediately triggered a wave of nausea and she weakly let her face drop to the pillow again, breathing in deeply and swallowing the bile that rose in her throat.

As she lay there she began picking out auditory clues - there was a persistent ticking somewhere in the room, maybe a clock? And she could hear a gentle thumping that had a vaguely metallic tone to it...somewhere nearby she could barely hear voices and footsteps approaching and then moving away a moment later.

Not being able to see the source of these sounds was a bit disorienting, and of course the more awake she became the more she realized just how badly she hurt.

That...that didn't help matters.

There was a burning and throbbing pain in her right side that immediately caught her attention and dissuaded her from attempting to move further, its source running from just under her armpit down her side before curving up onto her back. In a more general sense she ached all over and resigned herself to simply twitching each muscle carefully and testing what would move and what wouldn't.

After what seemed like hours, finally she rolled over.

She felt the skin pull around whatever was ailing her right side and also immediately felt cold across her front as stared numbly at a ceiling fan spinning lazily overhead; the ceiling was white and textured with artful fan-like shapes, and she let her gaze slip lower and noted the gold filigree-patterned royal red wallpaper.

As she took in the gold and red a rather horrible thought occurred to her which was almost immediately lost in the haze, but the bad feeling in the pit of her stomach remained.

Oh god...oh god no...

Using her left elbow she managed to leverage herself up higher on the pillow, shivering in the light breeze made by the fan above; her arms - both of them - were spotted with deep purple bruises and there was a large bandage taped around her right forearm that matched up with a dull ache that radiated from the area.

Where was she and what had happened...?

'The...Mundy...and the woods, the falls...'

She raised her good arm and pressed a hand to her forehead, gritting her teeth.

He'd come in through the door, that was right... She'd gone for the knife...and he'd...

Chased her. She'd led him back through the staff area, somehow.

Then, outside, and...up the trail toward her cabin, then away and out into the woods...

...to the falls. She'd taken a dive off Cadaver Falls to escape, she hadn't been able to outrun him-

-her train of thought abruptly stopped as she gave the rest of herself a once-over. Where she'd remembered wearing khaki pants and matching shirt with its little name tag and patch on the sleeve, she was now wearing loose cotton pants and a shirt much too big for her - it actually struck her as belonging more in a hospital than anything, but where would she have gotten it and...

Again she stared at the gold and red wallpaper, that knot forming in her stomach again.

She had been about to ask herself 'where am I?' but...no, that couldn't be possible. What she was thinking just wasn't-

Her breath caught in her throat as she turned to look at the rest of the room; she was on a 4-post bed, at least a queen-sized one, with its little table next to it. There was a door on the wall to her left, a window on the wall to her right, and the headboard of the bed was pushed against a wall that had a door in it that she recalled leading to a bathroom.

The carpet was an earthy brown shot through with golden thread, and there were indentations in it where furniture had obviously been removed recently. In fact, there by the window she vaguely remembered an armchair once being there, and on the other side of the bedside table should have been a vanity with a chest of drawers on the wall near the door and-

No, no no no...how...how how HOW?! There was no way they could have known. Was this some kind of joke?

Feeling a rising sense of panic, she jumped slightly as the door to the room opened and a man stepped in.

He was wearing a pale blue suit, finely tailored with a high-necked dress shirt and matching tie that was neatly tucked into the vest underneath the suit jacket. His hair was black, cut close to his head and slicked into place with pomade, and the beard he sported was neatly trimmed and shined like he'd oiled it. The jaw was squared and the mouth wide, the nose large, the eyes dark and set just slightly too far apart in his face.

Noticing her staring at him he offered her a smile as he shut the door behind him, and she felt the panic in her momentarily give way to blind terror.

It may not be the rotting, haggard face she'd drawn a year ago, but she knew it. She knew it and she recognized him.

And he recognized her.

"Ah, the sedative has worn off I see. Good afternoon, Miss MacKenna, may I get you anything?"

"You're dead," Shiloh whispered, shrinking back into the pillow.

* * *

Pine Heights was your basic middle-sized town that, as many towns had, had grown up around a single industry and then branched out from that and grew and changed as the years went by. Spy drove by a multitude of signs advertising tours of the logging facility and history museum that was at the 'Old City Center' as he drove through the main thoroughfares on his way to the hospital.

There was a visitor lot on the eastern side of the hospital; it was a fairly large, sprawling, five story building built out of beige and white brick, with every visible window trimmed in a red that Spy thought would be more fitting for a barn in a field somewhere. He walked past a fountain outside of the main entry doors that had a statue of some unnamed female saint at its center, her hair beneath a hood and arms spread outward; he flipped a dime into the fountain as he walked by and in the few moments it took to cross to the front desk he put himself back into the mentality of John Pastor, detective.

There was a fat, tiny old woman at the desk who squinted up at him through half-moon shaped spectacles, and she sounded like she was about to keel over when she spoke to him.

He tried not to be distracted by her disgusting, yellowed teeth as he easily slipped into the idea of John Pastor, and after he'd repeated himself twice he tried not to let his annoyance and anger toward the woman show. What good was there in letting some old, half-deaf idiot run your front desk?

She didn't even him ask for credentials or identification, she just smiled at him, all eager to please, and prattled on at him in a grandmotherly-like fashion until he'd pointedly reminded her why he was there and she finally directed him to the third floor, room 327 A. One quiet elevator ride later, and he was slipping unseen into the hospital room.

There was a frail-looking woman in the bed by the window, the only occupant of the room in fact; there were two nurses and a man in a crisp white lab coat Spy assumed was a doctor, and Spy pressed himself into the corner away from the door and waited there, cloaked, until the three had left.

When he was alone he let his cloak fall away, silently shut the door, then locked it and walked to stand at the end of the woman's bed.

She had three separate IVs hooked to her arms, an oxygen tube at her nose, and the entire left side of her head was swathed in a bandage; for a long moment he was content to simply study her - what he could see of her anyway - and she in turn silently stared up at him with her one good eye. The woman was small, petite almost, and the bit of hair he could see was a gray that had once been brown; he allowed their eyes to meet and noted with a bit of surprise that she showed no fear toward him that he could detect.

The only sound in the room was the soft beeping of the medical equipment that surrounded her until Spy reached to deactivate his disguise and then move to pick up the medical chart hanging from the end of the bed; the woman stirred feebly before inhaling deeply and breaking the silence.

"Are you one of hers?" the woman asked, her voice raspy and faint but understandable.

"That depends," Spy answered after a moment. He glanced at the name on the chart - Sandra Peterson. "Are you familiar with the Scholar?"

Sandra shook her head slowly. "I'm not Scholar. Ran into the woods...not found yet?"

Talking seemed to be a bit of an effort for her...he should make this quick before she became incapable of speaking. "No. Who am I looking for?

"If she wasn't found by now maybe she never will be. Ran into...the woods. Chased."

"What attacked you?"

"Man. Tall. Had a hat on. Scholar knew him."

Hmm...so this Scholar knew Sniper, somehow. "Knew him how?"

"Don't know." She paused to cough a bit.

"Very well. Who called the Administrator?"

She gave him a very weak smile. "Me. From here. Doctor walked in as I did it. Hung up. Can't let anyone know."

Spy nodded and hung the chart back on its hook. "Where do you suggest I begin looking?"

"Park. If she's alive...she lives there. Knows woods like...no one else."

One of the machines beeped insistently followed by a soft whoosh of an air release that drew Spy's attention; one of the IV lines was now connected to an empty fluid bag.

Sandra's gaze trailed up to it. "Should go. They come for empty ones pretty...quick. Gave me painkiller moment ago. Tired."

He made a quiet humming sound in his throat, then nodded at her. "A swift recovery for you, then."

"Not likely. Should've died."

He was already moving toward the door, cloaking and unlocking the door, then gingerly pulling it back open and sticking his head out to check up and down the hallway - there were a few nurses and doctors moving about but none seemed about to walk into this room. Without delaying further he hurried toward the elevators, avoiding people where he needed to until he was back out into the evening air and striding for the car.

This Scholar would be found at the park; whether this person would be dead or alive was anyone's guess.

Now...the next question would be how best to approach the park without being seen, or adding to the body count if he was.

It was getting dark and would certainly BE dark by the time he got back to the park...darkness would make getting inside unseen fairly easy but then that presented the problem of how would he search in the dark - light sources would alert anyone nearby to his presence, after all, and waiting until daylight would only increase the chances of there being more people around and more eyes to possibly spot him.

Exhaling slowly he pinched the bridge of his nose; he would go tonight and use only the small penlight he carried on himself - he would much rather encounter fewer people overall if he could manage it.

* * *

Laying rigid in the bed she could only watch as he retrieved a slatted wooden folding chair from just outside the door then set it up at the foot of her bed, settling into it before crossing one leg over the other and propping an elbow on his knee.

"Dead? I was, once, yes - quite dead, in fact. I have since been revived however, as technology is quite amazing."

She swallowed hard and gave the room another once over - there was nowhere to run-

Zane's gaze followed hers as he softly smiled. "Mmm, do I detect a bit of nervousness? I can't say I blame you, our last meeting was...well, I wasn't quite in control of mental facilities."

"You tried to kill me. You tried to kill everyone else," she hissed, looking back at him.

"So I did, so I did...as I said, I was not in control of my mind, exactly. Mistakes were made - a painful admission I assure you, as I am not one to make mistakes. You may calm down, if I wanted you dead you would be dead."

"What do you want? Where am I even at?"

He patted a hand in the air at her, and her eyes glued themselves to the flash of a silver disc on his palm. "All in due time, Miss MacKenna. Tell me, how do you feel? May I get you anything? I admittedly was not on board with the decision to keep you sedated for the trip here, but at the very least you have slept off a great deal of the pain you no doubt must be in."

She tore her gaze from his hand. "I said, where am I?"

Zane smiled at her. "Why, you were brought home of course."


	4. Chapter 4

Engineer tried to hide his amusement as he sat in their mess hall with guitar in hand, calmly listening to Gunther ranting about the dressing down Medic had just given him; he didn't seem mad, just exasperated and overwhelmed as he related the questions he was expected to answer and answer quickly, described Medic's overbearing, almost manic manner as he conducted his little interview, and ended it with a quiet grumbling about how the man had decided Gunther was welcome to stay in the back and cover the support positions but had best not stray onto the front lines.

"He acts as though I have never been shot at before," Gunther sighed.

With a shrug Engineer began strumming - yeah, that sounded right, or at least, close enough - and rested a foot up on a nearby chair, gently tipping his own chair back onto two legs; after dinner Engineer simply hadn't left the mess hall and some time after everyone else had vacated Gunther had wandered back in after Medic had had his little chat with him. The Medic had just...started talking and Engineer hadn't seen a reason to stop him, content to let the man run himself out of words before speaking up.

"He can be a bit of a perfectionist when he isn't distracted by the carnage going on, but I think he means well."

With a loud sigh Gunther ran his hand through his hair again - he'd done it repeatedly while talking, actually, a sort of nervous tick Engineer assumed - and then rested his elbows on his knees and put his chin in his hands. "What am I even doing here. I should have thrown that test, I would have thrown it if I'd known it would have led to this irritation."

Raising an eyebrow Engineer looked back over to him, letting the guitar lay flat in his lap. "Not exactly an encouraging attitude to have, coming from a man I'm supposed to be depending on to keep me alive."

The other waved an irritated hand at him in dismissal. "Nein nein, your safety and health are my top priority, there are merely days where I wonder if I would not have been better off remaining in the force, or seeking a position at a hospital somewhere. At least there the chain of command is structured, concrete. I would not be subjected to constant ridicule as though I am a know-nothing child."

"Eh, again, he means well. He might be some combination of raving blood-thirsty lunatic some days but he's never let us down. Got a real dedication to his craft you might say."

"That does not mean he has free rein to order me about. Does he take such liberties with you?"

"Not exactly - there's not any one of us that's in charge but we take each others opinions and whatnot to heart, especially if its something someone specializes in. It's not taking orders from each other so much as we're trusting each other to make the right call to keep the rest of us in one piece."

Gunther was silent a long moment before reaching to smooth his hair back down. "Your team appears to operate starkly different from my old one."

"Yeah? How'd Blu run things then? Can't say I ever had a friendly run in with one of them until our little meet up at the dam."

Gunther wrinkled his nose and again was quiet for a stretch. "...my team was not a team so much as it was a gathering of men wearing the same uniform."

"So Blu didn't get along, then," Engineer said into the pause that followed.

The Medic shook his head. "We functioned well enough on the battlefield, but as individuals motivated toward a common goal."

"Not much for teamwork then, huh."

Again he shook his head. "No. Which is why I am amazed at your team and how you interact. I almost did not believe what Miss Pauling told me about you and yours...it is so different from my own team."

Engineer paused in his playing to scratch at his cheek. "Given that, I find it damn hard to believe you guys made it this long without one of you dying."

Gunther snorted, loudly. "Oh, there have been deaths. Despite my best efforts."

"Ah," was all Engineer could say to that. He went back to strumming, letting the other man stew in silence.

It was odd hearing this straight from the mouth of a Blu; in the years when they'd been trying to kill one another he hadn't noticed any sort of discord or disjointed efforts to their offense - granted, he'd not been studying their movements, just trying to avoid getting flanked and shot, so maybe it was just because he'd not specifically been looking to study the enemy, but to him it didn't seem like they'd functioned any differently than his team did.

Spy would probably have something to say, some insight - that man ALWAYS had insight to the thoughts and actions of others - but man, if they'd remained in a stalemate that long with Blu hardly acting as a team...

Maybe Medic ought to re-assess Gunther's skill.

Gunther took a deep breath, then reached into his back pocket and pulled out folded paper, unfolding it to show technical readouts of syringes with chemical notations in the margins. "...while I thank you for listening I did have another reason to seek your company. He tasked me with...well. Have you seen these?"

Again Engineer set his guitar across his lap and took the offered readouts, giving them a look. "Oh yeah, I've seen these. Medic hates making these things - says they're the biggest pain in his backside to assemble."

The Medic's expression took on a look that was part frustration, part despair, and his tone went incredibly flat. "Oh _wunderbar_."

His look coupled with his tone had Engineer outright laughing as he handed the readouts back. "I take it you need the workshop then - come on, I'll let you inside."

Gunther followed along behind him as he led the way back through the halls and paused outside the workshop door, fishing around in his pocket for the key.

"...why do you lock the door?" Gunther asked as the lock clicked open. "Do you fear your teammates thieving?"

"Not thieving, exactly." Engineer shouldered the door open and then stepped aside to hold it as Gunther walked in behind him. "I've got something in here I don't want anyone messing with. Remember that Medicbot we acquired?"

Gunther stopped short right inside the door when he noticed the robot in question sitting up on a workbench across the room, its eyes lighting up and its head raising to look at them.

"Welcome back, sir. And, good evening Gunther."

Gunther's jaw fell open slightly and even Engineer had to pause for a moment before he clapped the Medic on the shoulder and stepped around him. "Yeah, uh...get used to being surprised around this thing pretty dang often." He crossed the room to lean against the bench, within easy reach of the robot.

"I did not think you were being serious when you said you wanted to keep...that," Gunther said, gesturing with a hand at the bot and appearing very reluctant to step further into the room. "What are you even doing with it?"

"Studying it, repairing it, mainly," Engineer replied. "I've used some of what I've seen cranking along in him to upgrade my sentry tracking systems, plus we've gotten some insights on where points of failure in the robot designs are. It's been pretty educational, really." He lightly kicked the back of a heel into the leg of the bench. "All right, bolt bucket - how'd you already know our guest's name?"

The robot was quiet for a second or two. "I am not sure. I simply did."

Gunther silently shook his head at that, suspicion in his features as he eyed the partially assembled robot; Victor's eyes flickered rapidly as it scanned the man from where it sat. "Perhaps I have seen him before."

"At the dam," Gunther grunted.

Victor blinked its eye-lights. "Of course I saw you then, but I meant prior to that. I feel that I have."

Gunther wrinkled his nose and crossed his arms, glancing between Engineer and the bot. "If you have then it is a not a memory I am willing to retread."

"All right, all right," Engineer broke in. "Probably just another programming glitch, it's hard telling what that man put into you at times." He glanced over at Victor. "Go ahead and power down, Victor, I'll get back to work on you in the morning."

Gunther's expression darkened. "What did you just call that thing?"

The robot dipped its head the best it could. "My name is Victor. I am-"

"-why does it have a name? What does it have THAT particular name?" Gunther broke in, jabbing a finger in the air toward it.

"I chose it myself, I considered it quite fitting-"

Gunther opened and closed his mouth a few times as the robot spoke, then spun on a heel and strode from the room before it could finish.

Victor turned its head to blink an eye at Engineer. "I appear to have upset him. I am not sure I understand how."

"Just, uh," Engineer muttered, pushing himself from the bench and moving for the door, "just power down for the night, I'll be back in the morning."

Engineer heard a quiet 'as you say, sir' from behind him as he hurried out after Gunther, locking the door behind him and jogging to catch up to the man, trying to match his long strides as Gunther began speaking once he was close enough.

"A simple robot I will tolerate. That thing in there I will not - it knew my name and Victor is the name of my youngest brother." Gunther raised a hand to pat it against the top of his own head. "Do you recall the wiring? The sensors? Our minds were hooked to machines - that thing should not know of my family, the name it chose cannot be mere coincidence. Es ist falsch, unnatürlich. Es sollte nicht sein."

As Gunther finally slowed to a stop Engineer sighed and planted his hands on his hips, glancing back toward the workshop door. "All right, my German's pretty spotty at best but I get your gist."

"I am glad you do," Gunther grumbled, crossing his arms and staring back down the hall at the locked door. "I am now left wondering what else it knows of me, what else of me is in it." He shuddered. "You do not know what it was like, being tethered to those things. You saw things, heard things. Relived things - good, bad, and otherwise. It is like seeing ones mind flayed open and pressed flat like the pages of a book."

Engineer blew out a sigh. "Well, that's not the first surprising thing its spouted at me. Partly why I've been dragging my feet on fixing it is I'm not sure I want to, but it acts so dang human I actually feel kind of guilty each time I think about scrapping it." He took his helmet off to rub at his scalp, then held it at his waist with his hands clasped together and his wrists supporting it against him. "Did you get to look at any of Zane's writings before the Administrator ordered us all back to business as usual?"

"Nein. Not really."

"...would you like to?"

Gunther gave him a wary look. "Why would I want to?"

"Medic's been studying them, I've been studying them - we can see the technical side of what he was doing to you all, but since you actually lived through it..."

Engineer trailed off, seeing a brief whirlwind of emotion flicker across the other's face - confusion, then understanding, then distaste, then a morbid-seeming curiosity, until finally Gunther ground his teeth together and nodded silently.

"All right then, we store it in Medic's office, c'mon."

They walked in silence toward the med center, Engineer waiting until the double doors were visible before speaking up again. "Might be, with your help, we can figure out exactly what Victor _is_."

"It is an abomination."

"It's also a highly advanced robot that a madman set loose on us. Just because we broke them doesn't mean they're gone forever and someone else can't pick up where he left up and make more."

Gunther's upper lip curled in disgust. "You think someone else would be that crazy as to repeat his experiment?"

"Crazy? Maybe not. Desperate enough to get rid of a handful of mercenaries?" Engineer chuckled as he reached out to push open the doors. "I'd put money on it if I were a gambling man."

* * *

There was a minimal night watch crew present at the park, comprised of both local law enforcement as well as the park's own security detail. All of them were easy enough to avoid and soon Spy was slipping into the main office, cloaked and with his penlight in one hand and revolver in the other.

Once within the front door he stood and simply observed, putting himself into the 'boots' of the Sniper imposter as he tried to piece together what could have happened during the attack. One thing he was certain of was the camera must have been where an empty bracket on the far wall now was - it was clear that the camera had been taken down, not destroyed, and based on the angle of the picture of the imposter it had to have come from there. There were also two other empty brackets on opposite sides of the room, pointed at the front desk to his right as well as back toward what he assumed was a general store and gift shop to his left, sectioned off in its own partial room.

After several minutes of listening to be certain no one was approaching, Spy clicked the penlight on and swept it across the room. Small details like bloodstains on the wooden floor, scuff marks, and a large gouge in the edge of the front desk stood out in the concentrated beam of light; the imposter had come through the door, and...then what...

He would have had to go for the store section, or the front desk. Had this room been crowded at the time? The scuff marks marring the floor seemed to suggest that yes, it had.

The beam of light fell on a broken bottle on the floor a bit further down the front desk, its contents having long since dried but the puddle left behind looked tacky, sticky, and glinted dully in the light. He took a few steps further into the room then moved to his right to glance behind the front desk.

The cash register he could see wasn't damaged - if he hadn't known better he'd swear it hadn't been touched - so the imposter hadn't looked to try and profit with a quick cash grab while he was here...meaning that whatever was in the missing package was valuable enough for the imposter to be single-mindedly seeking it with no room for distraction.

Spy moved to step behind the front desk now, penlight sweeping over its top; at the end he stood at everything seemed in place, but not five feet further down there were scuff marks from the store-side reaching across to the rear of the desk, along with a small mark about the width and breadth of his thumb on the wall at the same height as the desk. It gave him the impression that something or someone had been slung over the desk...and there was a pile of pamphlets and plastic stands in the floor beneath the mark to back up that hunch.

He carefully stepped over the pile of paper and plastic and moved toward a door tucked in a nook made by a part of the wall jutting out. There was a phone jack on the wall and little shelves built into the part sticking out above and below the jack - the phone that may have once hung there was gone, with little plastic nubs left behind to suggest it'd been ripped free - and the door had almost been unnoticeable from where Spy had stood behind the desk.

The words "Staff Only" was visible on the door in faded white lettering as Spy picked the lock and let himself through.

He was in a collection of small office rooms with a tiny room immediately to his right that was furnished like a break room - there was even a half-full coffee pot still warming on its hot plate - but the break room did not interest him. He tried the first office on his left and found it to instead be a storage room full of boxes of pamphlets, coloring books, informational posters on the local wildlife, and what appeared to be spare uniforms for the park rangers.

The middle office was more what he was looking for; it held a giant oak desk and a large chair that looked close to falling apart at the drop of a hat, along with a cluster of filing cabinets and a safe. The desk's top was cluttered with paperwork, the wall against which the desk was shoved was full of notes pinned or taped in place with mundane reminders about meetings, calls, addresses and names. Spy skimmed them briefly then began to silently open the desk drawers.

For the most part all he found were office supplies and items like phone books, state conservation contact information, tourism board information, and several copies of old newspapers with articles featuring the park.

In the lap drawer however, taped to the underside of the desk's top, Spy found a key.

He tried the filing cabinets and found the first two were unlocked and full of financial reports and camping plot applications. The last cabinet was locked but it was again easy to pick the lock open, and it was in here that Spy found payroll and staff information.

Sticking the penlight between his teeth, Spy began to flip through the files with both hands, mentally grumbling to himself as the files were not in any sort of order that he could fathom - they just seem haphazardly thrown in and so he nearly missed the one titled "Scholar, Anne Marie" as he neared the back of the file cabinet drawer.

Well now, let us see...

The file folder was thin and had only an employment application along with a signed and dated bank slip authorizing the park to deposit part of the woman's wages into a savings account in a credit union in Cedar Ridge. Everything else was fairly uninformative - the application had the woman's name and a Cedar Ridge address for her place of residence, had a Social Security number, but no phone number and the employment history was sparse. There was very little here to hint at why this Scholar person would be particularly important.

Not that that surprised him - he was dealing with what amounted to one of the Administrator's contacts, after all - but he'd hoped to at least find something useful.

A quick search of the rest of the cabinet's contents at least led him to discover that this Scholar woman lived on the park grounds. That was not much but it was better than nothing.

And now...the key, and that safe.

It took a moment of feeling around in the near-darkness to find the disguised keyhole on the safe's side that would allow him to bypass the combination lock on its front, but a moment later saw him grinning as he removed the documents from the safe. The ones right on top, in a thick envelope stamped with a fairly believeable U.S. Marshal Service forgery, were detailing a bit of Witness Protection orders for the Scholar woman.

It was such an obvious plant he had to bite a knuckle to keep from laughing outright as he skimmed the documents; about the only thing he could reasonably say about them was the forgery would fool anyone who didn't happen to be part of the U.S. Marshals.

Before leaving the office he placed everything back exactly as he'd found it, then stepped back out behind the front desk and carefully fished a park map from the pile of paper behind the desk; his mood immediately soured when, as he traced the roads through the park with a finger, he saw that this Scholar woman lived out toward the middle of the park in one of a handful of staff cabins that were only reachable by a single dirt road.

He would be walking an unfamiliar road, in the dark, in the mud, for a good half a mile on foot. _Great._

* * *

The cabin door was slightly crooked on its hinges and opened with just the barest pressure from his fingertips; Spy stepped inside and shut the door behind him, then panned the penlight's beam around until he found a light switch and flipped it on.

This far out in the woods he wasn't worried about being seen nor was he worried about killing anyone if he was seen (he'd be long gone by the time a corpse would be found, after all), and frankly it was a bit of a relief as the three fixtures in the cabin's ceiling turned on and illuminated everything in a warm glow.

The cabin hadn't looked very big from the outside and now that Spy was inside he could see that the cabin was actually a single rectangular room with only a small corner off to his right walled in. To his left was a tiny kitchen area with a table that seated two, a tiny stove and sink, and a coffee maker sitting atop a very small fridge on the counter. Almost directly in front of him was a fireplace - cold and dark - with a wooden box next to it for storing wood, and immediately to his right was a worn couch of dull earth tones with a bright orange knitted afghan folded over one of its arms.

The end of the rectangular room was a bedroom area; there were hooks in the ceiling where one could, he assumed, hang a curtain of some sort to section the area off. A narrow bed was pushed against the wall, its headboard tight against the walled off corner with the foot of the bed against the other corner and a nightstand with three drawers and a lamp atop it next to the head of the bed. The walled off part had a door and, by process of elimination and guesswork, Spy assumed that had to be a bathroom area of some sort.

There were pencil and ink drawings tacked up on the walls, and the kitchen table had a stack of books and notebooks on one end; Spy bent briefly to peer at the titles and found them all to be wildlife encyclopedias with a single art instruction book on the bottom of the pile, while leafing through the notebooks showed hand-drawn sketches of birds and small mammals along with written notes on animal care, habits, and habitats.

He supposed a love of the outdoors would be a requirement of working in a natural park and put everything back as he'd found it before doing a quick sweep of the room.

One odd thing he noticed was there were no personal documents within the cabin - no mail, no bills, no work documents. There were the drawings, the nature books, and in the top drawer of the nightstand he found four dime store novels - three of which were spy-based intrigue, one was a western - and aside from those...there was little in here to give anyone any sort of clue about the personality of the person who occupied this space.

It was as though this Scholar woman lived here, but did not _live_ here.

The second drawer held empty notebooks, a hairbrush with a few strands of auburn hair in the tines, a sewing kit, and a metal box that, once he'd gotten the lock open, he found held a birth certificate, Social Security card, and five hundred dollars worth of fifty dollar bills.

The third drawer, oddly, did not open - Spy tugged on it a few times and found it jammed pretty thoroughly in place. He left it for later and continued to poke around.

Under the bed he found drawers with clothing and a few pairs of boots, there did not appear to be anything hidden under the mattress or pillow...and then, he moved into the bathroom, pausing in the doorway as a faint chemical smell reached him.

The bathroom was sparse - toilet, tiny sink, claustrophobic shower barely the width of his shoulders - but noticeably there was a chemical stink somewhere in there, and its small size allowed him to locate the bottle of black hair dye stuffed into the bottom of the trashcan under wadded toilet paper fairly quickly.

The hairbrush he'd found had reddish hair in it, but this dye was black. Interesting.

He'd long since abandoned any notion that he was searching for a package, but for the life of him, based on what he'd found so far, he had no idea who he should be searching for now either. There were no clues to be found in this cabin to suggest where this Scholar person might have gone, if she'd survived the attack; that Sandra in the hospital had seemed to imply that Scholar could have disappeared into the woods but Spy had no means of tracking anyone down through the wilderness, especially not at night.

He supposed he could wait until morning and see what could be found when he could actually see his surroundings, but again...Spy was no outdoorsman. This was not what he specialized in.

"I should have brought Sniper," he muttered to himself, perching on the edge of the bed and giving the room another look. Perhaps he'd missed something? ...no, this room was entirely too spartan for him to have missed something obvious.

There was the drawer jammed shut that he had not gotten open yet, but was it shut on purpose or was it legitimately jammed? Either was equally likely...only one way to find out.

Dropping to a knee in the floor Spy clicked on the lamp on the nightstand for the added light then began to feel around the nightstand's edges; there were no nails to suggest the drawer had been nailed closed, so that ruled out that possibility. He again tried tugging the drawer open to no avail, then on a whim he pulled the second drawer out and shined his penlight inside - there was a solid 'floor' under the second drawer, so there'd be no seeing into the third drawer by removing the second.

With a sharp exhale born of irritation, Spy carefully eased his fingers under the nightstand and began to feel around, pausing with a smirk when his fingertips met something solid.

Whatever it was had a slight curve to it and somewhat sharp edges, and his fingers picked out a few minor dents and ridges - it was metal, whatever it was.

His fingers then encountered something slick, in a thin band across the object. Brow furrowing Spy simply seized the edge of the object and began to tug down, hearing a tearing sound as the object came loose from the bottom and its back edge thunked into the floor.

He pulled it into view, taking in its curved and triangular shape, with the strip of clear packing tape across its-

"You have got to be shitting me."

He couldn't help it as the expletive left his mouth as he held up the robotic faceplate to the lamp's light.


	5. Chapter 5

"How did I get here?"

Zane lightly ran fingers through his beard, tilting his head as he appeared to think about it. "Well, that's interesting - and also it was not my intention, I assure you - but it was on the orders of your family. I was content to leave you in the hospital until you'd recovered from your fall but, well," he trailed off and shrugged a shoulder. "I could hardly argue with my benefactor."

Hospital? She didn't remember a hospital at all. Going over the falls must have messed her up worse than she'd thought.

It must have shown on her face because he smiled in what she assumed was meant to be a reassuring way. "Yes, you were quite banged up, which is why I did not exactly agree with transporting you...at any rate, as I have asked, may I get you anything?"

Shiloh shook her head and immediately regretted the movement as it made the world spin a bit.

Zane tutted at her. "Easy does it, I'm afraid - your family insisted you be kept sedated for the trip here but also the initial painkillers used also function as an effective sedative. It would seem you're still feeling the effects of one or the other."

Sedation...that must be why she didn't remember anything about a hospital. Squeezing her eyes shut against the nausea she took several deep breaths, then again looked over at him. "What do you want?"

He smiled at her and leaned back in his chair, inhaling and exhaling slowly through his nose. "Well that IS the question, isn't it? And the answer is easy, though its explanation is lengthy. The simple answer is, I would very much like your assistance in a handful of tasks."

"I don't help murderers," she snapped, closing one eye against the spin of the room.

He huffed through his nose, looking incredibly amused. "Ah...you know, that is interesting. Were you or were you not in the company of a group of nine men, mercenaries all of them, men paid to exterminate others? Hmm? I assure you any one of them has a higher body count than I do."

"That's hardly the same thing as wiping out entire towns, butchering pieces off, then leaving the rest to rot."

His nose wrinkled. "I am not denying what I did, nor am I fully excusing it. I did many things while out of my mind that I look back on now and question how anyone could allow me to do that, but I digress - the point is, Miss MacKenna, that you kept company who have killed far more than I have, and I would appreciate it if you'd recognize that. We are both adults here, capable of rational conversation and logical thought - I'm certain you're capable of figuring out why I'd rather not see you as the hypocritical creature you are presenting yourself as. Now...will you at least hear me out before spouting further nonsense at me?"

"Do I even have a damn choice?" she growled, using her good arm to leverage herself further upright on the pillow behind her.

"You always have a choice my dear, and I hope you will seriously consider what I am about to share with you."

If he was bothered by her glaring he gave no indication of it as he shifted in his seat, crossing one leg over the other and lightly bouncing his fingertips together in front of his chest. After several moments of finger-bouncing he closed his eyes and exhaled loudly. "Now... Decades ago, I worked for the Mann family. They brought me over from Britain to America to revolutionize their machinery and I - never one to pass on a challenge, mind you - came over willingly and began my work. It was an absurdly simple matter to improve their equipment and afterward I was kept on retainer to maintain them. This was...exceptionally boring, you see, so I began to dabble in other fields, primarily in the field of medicine."

"Mining, back in those days, was at times very dangerous and I noted that the Manns had employees that had maimed or missing limbs that were lost in accidents with the old machinery. As my studies in the medical field broadened I began to look into prosthetic limb replacement for these men...and it was during this time I somehow ran afoul of one of the Mann's servants..." Zane paused, upper lip peeling back in a sneer. "Ridiculous, demanding, exacting woman...to this day I still do not know what I did to draw her ire, she and I did not exactly cross paths often. She was a servant within the house and my place was among the Mann Co. infrastructure, but regardless...at some point, she decided she disliked me, and that I needed to be released from service."

Shiloh flinched toward the opposite side of the bed as Zane stood abruptly and began pacing in the open area between the end of the bed and the door.

"It was then I began noticing flaws appearing within my creations...at first I blamed it on inferior materials and Mr. Mann was kind enough to provide only the highest quality materials for my studies - he, you see, saw the value in taking care of one's workforce, and I do not mean just me: the men who received the first prototypes of my prosthetics claimed their lives immediately improved, and that they felt more like the men they had been prior to the accidents that marred them. They worked twice as hard, ten times happier than previously. Mr. Mann was pleased with the increase in output." Zane spun around suddenly, a finger jabbing in the air toward the ceiling, the volume of his voice rising as he spoke. "But, as I have said, flaws began cropping up. Limbs began failing, and machinery as well. I proved without doubt that it was not the quality of the materials I was using, so then, the question was - what was going wrong?"

He stared at her for several long, uncomfortable moments; Shiloh had the feeling she was expected to offer some reply, some sort of response, but she laid against the pillow and glowered at him instead - let him tell his little story, she wasn't about to step in to feed his theatrics.

Finally, and with a heavy frown, Zane went back to pacing. "The answer came to me one evening after I found that woman within my office. She claimed to be looking for me, as Mr. Mann wanted to speak with me or so she claimed, but the next day an arm I had built sparked and caught fire quite suddenly - it was a powered prototype, one that had worked without issue day after day of targeted testing, then after I found HER somewhere she was not supposed to be..."

After another staring down Shiloh finally crossed her arms. "...yeah, sabotage, I get it."

He grunted but appeared pleased he'd finally gotten a response out of her. "She had to have been the cause - a single prototype failing after many tests? I could believe that. Machines breaking down in quick succession? Believable, but...questionable, you see. When everything I had ever created or repaired began to fail...that is beyond coincidence, wouldn't you say? Men were being hurt, profits lost, and the blame was beginning to fall squarely on me."

As Zane spoke Shiloh slowly pushed herself up a bit further, then sat up under her own power and carefully rotated her shoulders; whatever was ailing her right side began shooting stabbing pains across her back and she could feel the faint sting and pull of what she assumed was surgical tape against her skin. She tuned him out for a moment and focused on forcing the room to stop spinning before knotting her fingers into the fabric of her pants and using her good arm to help swing her legs, one at a time, over to the edge of the bed.

"-did not stop at the injuring of the employees," Zane was saying when she turned her head just enough to stare at him from the corner of an eye. "No, no...her sabotage took a much more personal turn toward the end of Mr. Mann's life. He was very ill, you see, and I took it upon myself to see if I could alleviate his suffering - I knew I could not save the man, but I wanted to make him comfortable in his final years. I admit I...took my ideas, my plans, a bit far."

Very carefully she eased herself forward until her bare toes touched the floor.

"When I came to America, I brought my sister with me...she was all that remained of my family, our parents having passed on years before. She was quite the lovely person, and was always pushing me to greater heights - her insights many times guided me to seeing solutions I hadn't yet discovered. It was her encouragement that led me to push further than I ever had before when I began researching ways to help Mr. Mann-"

With a deep breath she inched forward until she could put a bit of weight on her feet; her lower legs trembled, she had the sensation of being weak in the knees, but now that her head wasn't spinning a tiny spark of confidence in her ability to stand up began to grow. Behind her Zane kept talking, so lost in his own story he hadn't noticed she wasn't paying him any attention; Shiloh sucked in a breath and held it, then carefully stood.

For the briefest of moments a dizzy feeling, coupled with a rush of blood in her ears and a sparkling clouding of her vision, made her feel like she was at the bottom of a pool looking upward. The wallpaper's vivid coloring and gold pattern of filigreed vines arranged in a fan-like shape provided something to focus on to get her vision cleared so she stared at it silently until she could pick out the slender lines that made up the pattern.

All right...she was on her feet, the dizziness had passed. The question now was could she manage to walk?

The door leading to the bathroom was to her right and also ajar slightly; Shiloh stuck a hand out slightly for balance and took a few uneasy steps toward it.

"Would you care for assistance?"

...right, Zane must have finally noticed she was ignoring him.

"No, I'm a big girl, I can use the toilet on my own, thanks," she grunted. Step by step she finally closed the short distance between the bed and the doorway, leaning against the door frame for a moment and letting it hold her up.

She heard a creaking of wood and then he was there, trying to offer her an arm to lean on; she staggered away, further into the bathroom and caught herself against the marble sink.

"I said no. Don't touch me - don't EVER touch me," she snapped.

Framed in the doorway Zane peered in at her, frowning heavily as he clasped hands behind his back. "Miss MacKenna, if I wanted you dead you would BE dead. I am uncertain when you stopped listening to me so I won't bother asking and just get to my point: I desire your assistance to-"

"-once again, I've already said no." She looked around the bathroom - no cabinets in here. There was the toilet, the sink with a mirror hanging on the wall above it, and a claw-foot tub with a curtain hanging from a rod attached to the walls. There was also a tiny window but even from here she could see metal grating had been installed over it. Maybe she could manage to swing the back of the toilet at him...

He blew out an exasperated sigh. "Listen, you stubborn fool - I don't want you. I don't _care_ about you. I don't care about your precious men. My interest in you and them both stem from a single desire: I want Helen. I want to end her and her family line for what she has done to me and mine. You could help me-"

"-I said no-"

"-by convincing the men to stand down and get out of my way," he interrupted, raising his voice to be just loud enough to speak over her. "I am more than willing to let you and the men walk from this alive to atone for what I have done in the past. Do you understand that? All you need to do to save them is just cooperate with me."

"No. No. And no. And even if I was stupid enough to believe you and be willing to do that, I wouldn't even know where to begin looking for them."

The smile he flashed her was thin and hardly genuine. "Ah, and whose turn now is it to be skeptical?"

"You are a murderer, a liar, and I'm not helping you. They don't need my protection," Shiloh growled at him quietly. "They took you and your stupid robots down once already, they are more than able to do it again."

"Did you miss entirely that I have stated I don't want to engage them?" he snapped. "I am giving you a chance to save yourself and all of them - I want HELEN. I need them to not interfere! What is so hard to understand about this?"

She used the sink as a handhold to edge toward the toilet. "I need to pee, get the hell out."

For several moments longer he stood there, face reddened and loudly inhaling and exhaling through his nose, before he did an about face. "I will leave you to think upon what I have said. I am sure you will see reason soon enough. May I get you anything?"

"...where's Alexei?"

She saw his head tilt, then he turned back around. "Who?"

"Alexei." Shiloh lowered herself down to sit on top of the closed toilet seat, glaring up at him. "My step-father."

His brow furrowed. "...step-father...Alexei... I can't say the Madam has mentioned such a thing to me. How would I know him?"

"He's a huge Russian man."

Zane crossed an arm over his chest, then propped his other elbow on it so he could stroke his beard with a hand. "I...cannot say that I am aware of such a person. If I inquire after him, will you seriously consider my offer?"

"I'm not making any promises for anything to anyone."

His nose wrinkled but he turned again and strode out of her sight beyond the doorway. She strained her ears to listen to his receding footsteps, then heard him pause as she heard the doorknob rattle.

"Is there anything else?" he called.

"...cup for water, proper clothes, aspirin." She glanced around the bathroom again. "Cigarettes."

There was a snort from the other room. "Very well. I will also inform your caretakers that you are awake and no doubt hungry."

There was another rattle of the doorknob and she waited to hear the door close behind him-

"-oh, and I believe this would go without saying, but I shall caution you anyway: I greatly suggest you do not attempt to set fire to the room. I am led to believe the Madam here holds no great love for you, and I do not think she'd send anyone to let you out in the event of a fire."

"Thank you for assuming I'm stupid enough to torch a room I'm trapped in."

"It's good to see you possess at least enough sense for that," came his reply and then finally, she heard the door close followed by several loud clicks as it was locked behind him.

She gave it several minutes before she moved again, actually using the toilet before moving to splash water on her face from the sink. In the mirror she could see several bruises dotting her chin, neck, and a few that disappeared under the collar of her shirt.

She was slightly relieved to see that the bathroom door had a lock, and once she had the door shut and locked she carefully inched her shirt up over her head and slowly spun in front of the mirror to try and get a look at the damage.

There was a large bruise seemingly leaking out from under the bandage taped to her side and up her back; she could press her fingers against the bandage's outer part and, based on where the pain was worst, trace what had to be a fairly deep and long gash from her side that curved up toward her spine.

She could only wonder at what she'd hit that had done that, but it along with the cut on her forearm appeared to be the only injuries on her that wasn't what felt like pulled muscles or were a part of her collection of bruises.

Her left ankle was a bit swollen and red but everything from her waist down seemed to be in working order at the least. That was promising.

Carefully Shiloh began to stretch, trying to work some of the stiffness out, and as she stretched she eyed the bathroom again.

The curtain rods (both shower curtain and the frilly, fancy valance hanging above the window) were solidly bolted to the walls - the odds of her being able to prize them loose would be slim.

There was the mirror...if she could find a way to shatter it she'd have something sharp to work with, but glass was brittle... It would make for a weapon if she desperately needed one, she supposed, if she could find a time and a way to break it where it wouldn't be noticed by anyone.

The back of the toilet seat was heavy and cumbersome (and would also probably break if she hit something solid with it...like a head) so she classified it too as a weapon she would try if she got desperate.

What else did she have to work with...

Her captors would probably notice if she tried to hang on to cutlery (and she had no hope that they'd bring her something that required a knife to eat), there was the possibility they would give her a glass actually made of glass, there would be whatever they gave her to light cigarettes with (and she felt like she'd earned a pat on the back for having the clarity of mind to ask for them even though she didn't smoke at all).

What else, what else. She moved to stand in the doorway to give herself a view into both rooms.

'C'mon, keep looking, start thinking...what else is in here...'

* * *

The patrol car rocked gently as the officer got in and slammed the door; the man was obviously tired - bags and dark circles under his eyes and a sag to his shoulders along with the barest hint of lethargy to his movements as he leaned his head back against the headrest and let out a heavy sigh. He was beginning to settle in to take a breather, removing his hat to rub at his balding scalp with a questionably clean handkerchief, when he heard the soft click of a hammer behing pulled back mere seconds before he felt the cold barrel of a gun press in against him, just below his right ear, from an intruder who materialized out of nowhere beside him in the passenger seat.

"Excuse me, sir," Spy whispered, pressing the barrel in a bit more forcefully. "You don't mind if I ask you a few questions, do you?"

The officer's eyes widened - to his eyes, a blonde-haired man in baggy sweats and worn sneakers had just popped out of thin air - and as he opened his mouth Spy held up a warning finger.

"If anything but an affirmative is about to leave your lips, I will kill you." After a moment of watching the man squirm, Spy finally received a nod. "Good. Now, tell me everything you know about survivors or anyone else who has disappeared in this park recently. And I mean _everything."_

* * *

Spy didn't bother changing modes of transportation, pausing only to refuel and purchase a drink before hitting the nearest interstate and speeding away to yet another town. His impromptu interview with that officer had resulted in one final lead to follow.

It seemed that several days before the attack there had been a missing person report filed for three hikers that had disappeared after climbing the area around Coldstone Falls - locally known as Cadaver Falls due to the high mortality rate of those who tried to climb the areas specifically fenced off from the public. The falls fed the Coldrise River, a deep and fast-moving ribbon of water that cut west through the region, becoming deeper and more dangerous the further west one traveled on it until it went over another massive falls into Deep Basin Lake.

As the officer had explained, a day after the attack, downstream and about five miles out from the next town over, four persons had been pulled from the waters - three corpses, and a single survivor.

The survivor was sent to Crystal Summit, the next major town over and located closer to where the survivor had been fished out of the river than Pine Heights.

If this survivor was not involved or tied in any way to who he was looking for then Spy would really only have two choices then: give up, or get Sniper out here to try and find his target out in the woods.

Speaking of...

He glanced over at the passenger seat where, on top of the map, sat the robot faceplate he'd taken from the cabin; after a moment he shook his head, wondering at the absurdity of it all.

Many times over the last year he'd found himself thinking back to Shiloh MacKenna, to their little adventure that had nearly gotten them all killed several times until they'd finally stormed the fort and taken out one Ebenniah Zane.

He'd had immediate suspicions when she'd been found - the robots assaulting her were attempting to capture, not kill her - and even though some of his questions regarding her had been answered as time had gone on he still had several that lacked answers, prime among them being exactly how MacKenna was connected to the Administrator, and what the old woman wanted with her.

Many of the other mercenaries had quickly forgotten about her once she was out of their lives - with the exception of Sniper, but then that was another set of questions left unanswered - and Spy had never brought her or his musings up around them, but on those days where they weren't fighting and he had nothing else to occupy his time, he'd find himself thinking back on those days when she had been there and would wonder if perhaps he'd missed something.

...as it now seemed he was on a possible collision course with her again, however, he wondered if he'd get another chance at answering those questions he had.

Of course, none of that would matter if this final survivor wasn't actually her, and if she couldn't be found within the woods either...

It was a long and silent drive to Crystal Summit.


	6. Chapter 6

Even with Victor powered off (the robot consoled with the promise Engineer would trace the faulty wiring in its arm later that evening) Gunther spent the afternoon visibily uneasy and quickly assembling the syringes Medic had requested; by the time he was done and Engineer was locking the door behind him, the blonde-haired man was iritated and swearing quietly under his breath.

"And now you see why Medic hates making those things."

"Ja," Gunther grunted. "If I were not sold on their usefulness I would have refused."

Engineer shrugged as the two of them set off down the hall toward Medic's infirmary, all of the crafted syringes stored in a metal carrying case swinging from Gunther's hand at his side. "They're only useful to a point, which is why Medic rarely bothers with them - he's typically right there with you with his medigun, you wouldn't have a reason or even the time to pop one."

"It is still interesting and useful from a scientific point," Gunther countered, waggling the pointer finger of his free hand into the air. "And it could very well prolong your life long enough to allow a medic to reach you. I do not see why these are not carried at all times - were I aware of these things when I was still among my own team they would have been made to carry them by default."

Engineer snorted, grinning a bit. "Would they have listened?"

"You would be amazed at how persuasive I can be when I am angry, soaked in blood, and waving a bonesaw around."

"I think you and our Doc ought to get along just fine."

"Perhaps. He has not had much to say to me as yet."

Engineer shrugged as they rounded a corner and headed down a short hallway that dead-ended at the double doors leading to the infirmary. "He didn't talk much when we all first met either, that changed pretty quickly though. At any rate-"

He had his hand out, ready to push one of the doors open, when there was a quick, blaring blast of an alarm; a caged lightbulb above the double doors began to blink bright red as the alarm continued to blare in short bursts.

"-hold that thought, we gotta scramble," Engineer grunted, spinning on a heel and moving at a quick jog back the way they'd just come.

Gunther made it two steps after him before Medic came bursting through the doors, struggling into his coat and skidding to a halt before he collided with the other male. "Ah, gut. Gather your gear, we are moving out."

"To where?"

"To defend wherever the robots are heading," Medic replied, gesturing impatiently for Gunther to step inside.

* * *

Engineer had rushed into the workshop, grabbed his guns and toolboxes, then had hurried out just as quickly...and he had arrived so suddenly he'd almost caught Victor's eyes lit up and blinking idly as the robot sat and thought.

Or, at least it was doing what it referred to as thinking. Thinking was a human term, one of the terms Engineer had said didn't exactly apply to the robot as robots processed, they didn't "think."

Regardless, Victor had gone still and quiet, letting its eyes go dark, when Engineer had burst through the door; it was supposed to still be powered down from earlier, when Engineer and Gunther had been in there, working...'supposed' to be.

Victor felt odd about having sat there the entire afternoon pretending to be offline, listening to the two men talk back and forth. It understood what deceit was and knew it was deceiving the man who had treated him well and was kindly repairing him; if it was correctly understanding what fondness meant, it imagined that term could be applied for how it felt toward the human, and yet there it had sat, covertly listening in while outwardly appearing to be turned off.

Lying was uncomfortable and Victor now knew why some humans preferred to avoid the emotions associated with it; the robot was certain there would be a time in the future when it could discuss such a feeling with the man and perhaps earn forgiveness for its eavesdropping, but it also had to admit to itself that it was fully aware what the phrase 'the ends justify the means' meant and how that phrase related to lying and deceit.

The truth was, the more the robot heard Gunther speak the more convinced it was that it had met the man somewhere before...it was a nagging feeling, one it did not have a name for. The feeling was just irritating enough that it felt it was justified in trying to secretly learn about the man, even if listening in on casual conversation had only made the nagging feeling worse without answering anything.

There had to be a reason for this strange feeling of partial recognition, however...had Engineer perhaps dislodged something that made a section of memory accessible again?

Or, maybe... How did humans access their memories? Victor knew they had them and had some idea of the anatomy of a human brain - perhaps it was because Victor lacked the chemical interactions that took place in a brain that was preventing it from piecing this together.

Then again...it was entirely possible that information that would explain this strangeness and tie everything together had been fragmented and damaged, and in this case it was like being given a jigsaw puzzle to assemble while lacking a picture of what the finished product should look like. It would not be impossible, but it would certainly be frustrating to complete.

Damage aside, Victor could also assume a great deal of this strangeness would not be so pronounced in a human; as a human grew and matured they would no doubt learn how to properly manage their behaviors and how they learned, not to mention their brains were made of living tissue that could conceivably regenerate whereas if anything within Victor's memory storage was damaged it was permanently gone.

After a few moments of deliberation coupled with listening again to the recording of Engineer and Gunther conversing Victor decided to go sorting through what 'memories' it had - if it examined everything stored within it surely it could discover something it hadn't been consciously aware of before, or maybe be able to finally complete a list of what had been lost.

Maybe it would even identify where it knew Gunther from.

There was a great deal of information to go through so the first order of business was to section it into manageable blocks it could cycle through...that was simple enough to arrange and moments later Victor was parsing through every bit and byte of its own inner data.

Within the fifth segment it encountered something new, something it was certain it hadn't noticed or accessed before. In fact...whatever this segment of data was, it was wanting an activation code.

That was odd. What could possibly be there that needed a code to activate? Everything Victor needed to keep functioning properly (when not damaged, anyway) were readily accessible with a simple thought...

Victor marked the strange cluster of files to return to later and began to cycle through the rest, its search slowing as it began to run out of information to look through; nothing seemed out of the ordinary, but then wouldn't everything stored inside it seem normal to the robot? Another person was definitely required then, someone able to spot what should and should not be stored inside its memory...when Engineer came back this evening Victor would ask if he minded taking a look, even if it would likely take the man several weeks, if not a month or so, to get through it all.

The only thing that seemed out of place was that cluster of files... The idea that there was something inside it that it couldn't access was irritating, angering, and ridiculous. Why should there be anything inside it that it couldn't access? What purpose could it possibly serve?

It went back to the cluster and was prompted to enter the activation code, and Victor was content to sit and merely 'think' for a moment, letting the prompt repeat every few seconds. It didn't have any solutions or codes stored anywhere that it could try, and it spent a few minutes trying to brute-force its way into the protected files to no avail.

Perhaps Engineer could figure it out...

Victor was now very familiar with the sensation of frustration as it willingly powered down in a huff to await Engineer's return.

* * *

"Have you given my request some thought?"

"Sit and spin on it, asshole."

Shiloh could just make out his reflection in the window, smirking at the look of irritation that crossed his features before he carefully composed himself and took a deep breath.

"I had hoped you would be more willing, given that I am wanting to let you and your companions walk away from this alive."

"They don't need my protection," Shiloh growled, crossing her arms and still refusing to turn around to look at him. "And if you're thinking you can scare me into helping you, you've got another thing coming." After a moment of watching his reflection fume, she glanced over her shoulder. "You're wasting your time and mine."

Zane had apparently brought a small tray with him and sat it on the foot of the bed; a bowl full of a broth-based vegetable soup steamed next to a few slices of bread with an empty tumbler with a tiny bottle of aspirin sitting within it, alongside a small sprig of red grapes, and a single spoon. She gave it a quick look before turning back to the window; the first couple of meals he'd brought to her he'd left without fanfare, and all of them had been foods she didn't need flatware for. Apparently they were willing to trust her with a spoon now, and there was a part of her grateful they'd decided she was deserving of aspirin finally.

Now if they'd just give her the means to re-bandage her side and some damn clothing, something that didn't look like hospital wear...

She turned back to the window and a moment later heard a long, slow sigh from Zane behind her. "I was thinking my offer quite generous."

"I have a suggestion for where you can shove that offer."

A sudden jolt of panic shot through her as she felt an invisible force close around her and force her to turn around; Zane had his hand outstretched, a silver disc strapped to his palm with silver wire that ran up to three caps on his thumb, pointer, and middle fingers. Instinctively she tried to twist away and gasped as the grip tightened and pain exploded up her side - the sudden pressure was akin to knives being jabbed into the wound there and it was almost more than she could stand.

"Let me make one thing perfectly clear," he growled, a flicker of amusement crossing his features as he watched her squirm and pant in pain. "Without me the Madam here would have your head. Do you understand that? You were brought here because of me, and you continue living because I have expressed a need for you."

He let her dangle a few inches off the floor before releasing her and watching impassively as she landed in the floor on her knees, trembling.

"My protection - and indeed, my offer of clemency to you and the nine men - is only good for as long as it takes me to achieve my goals. And should I run afoul of your men before that time, I can and will defend myself. If that results in their deaths that is on your hands, not mine." He snorted loudly and turned toward the door.

She swallowed hard, tasting bile, and raised her head to glare at him. "...make you feel real big to attack an unarmed injured-"

A moment later Shiloh counted herself lucky that she'd left the bathroom door open a crack, as Zane picked her up with the field from that gauntlet of his and flung her through it; the door hit the wall with a resounding bang as Shiloh collided with the pedastal the sink sat on, rolling over onto her stomach with a cheek pressed to the tile floor.

She heard another loud bang and it took her a moment to figure out that it had been Zane storming from the room, slamming the door shut behind him.

After several minutes of laying face-down in the floor she finally hooked a hand over the sink's edge and pulled herself into a sitting position, breathing in sharp little gasps as she pressed her free hand to her side. It felt like the skin under the bandage was on fire - she'd probably torn open whatever was under that bandage and the desire to rip it off to get a look at what was wrong was overwhelming, only stopped by a tiny voice in her head reminding her that she didn't have anything to doctor the wound with if she took the bandage off.

A few minutes longer and she was back on her feet, carefully easing her way back toward the bed; she gulped down the soup's liquid quickly, then dumped the aspirin bottle out of the tumbler before filling it from the sink and chugging that down as well.

The bottle of aspirin was still sealed so she felt safe in having a few, downing it with two more glasses of water before picking a bit at the bread...then, she eyed the spoon.

There was no telling when someone would come back for the dishes.

She pushed herself to her feet again, clutching the spoon in one hand, and went back into the bathroom.

On the ceiling above the toilet was a decorative grate that covered an exhaust fan, fastened to the ceiling with four screws. Using her free hand against the wall to keep herself steady, Shiloh climbed up on the toilet and jammed the end of the spoon into one of the screws.

It fit, but just barely.

* * *

"Do you have the coordinates?"

"Yes sir. I will reach the target location in-"

Zane waved the Elite Spybot away irritably. "Yes, yes, whatever - just move quickly, and try not to utterly fail this time, yes? I will activate its homing sequence in two hours, that should be sufficient time for you to get close enough to pick up on it yourself."

The Spybot lightly touched its metallic fingertips to its temple, then moved toward the door that led to the stairs and the rear exit of the club.

Madam Zoya had 'graced' him with two rooms in the basement of her club: one he used as his personal quarters that he had managed to turn into something resembling a bedroom; the other held a desk covered in blueprints and schematics, several cramped workbenches, and a single computer terminal.

He stood in front of the computer now, hardly able to believe what it showed - to an uneducated observer it simply looked like a dot blinking on a mess of concentric lines, but to the trained eye one could recognize a topographical map and realize the significance of the blinking dot.

It was amazing, really - he had only intended to track his Spybot and keep his information securely stored...imagine his surprise when he caught the barest glimpse of a second dot on the map one afternoon. It had disappeared so quickly he had at first assumed he'd imagined it, but he had set the Spybot to watching the terminal's screen and, lo and behold, the bot reported seeing the same thing: a second dot, indicating one of Zane's Elites had survived the dam. It...wasn't AT the dam anymore, but somehow it had survived.

That was a miracle he had not expected - the Elite Spybot had come back on its own and Zane had thought it was the only one left and hadn't thought to look for the rest: after all, the Spybot had informed him of the aftermath of the explosion at the base and the scrap heaps it had observed before collapsing outside of the armored door, where Zane had found it days later.

But this...this one...

Granted, the dot disappeared and reappeared as the unit was turned on and off, but based on what Zane and the Elite Spybot had observed over these last few weeks, its location remained the same each time. Wherever it was it wasn't moving, and that was enough to convince Zane to attempt a retrieval even if it meant risking his sole remaining Elite to do so.

Some time after the Elite Spybot had left, Zane tapped a few commands into the computer and waited to see if a connection could be made - he hadn't bothered asking the Madam's men what they'd connected this terminal to, but it seemed a great deal of information was easily at his fingertips if he accessed a program called "Underground" and it was through this that he found himself easily piggybacking onto a network of broadcast towers that stretched across the continent.

With a solid connection to a tower within range of the dot on the map, Zane broadcast the simple command of "Tell me where you are."

Whatever unit was still intact sent back a weak signal, one that was garbled and didn't make a lick of sense...but it had replied. There was enough of a robot left to respond and that was promising. He wondered which one it was, which one had somehow evaded destruction and HOW it had avoided its doom.

It didn't matter really, he was just curious.

* * *

Victor did not stir again until Engineer turned him back on, its inner chronometer informing it that it had been powered down a good eleven hours.

"Good morning, sir," Victor said as it raised its head. "Is all well?"

Engineer looked tired and bloodied. "Well enough - no one died, anyway. What were you doing?"

Victor felt a sensation of fear. "Doing?" Did he know after all?

"You were sitting here buzzing, what were you doing?"

"...I was buzzing? How? I was powered down."

Engineer stood in front of him, hands on his hips. "You were buzzing so dang loud I could hear it through the door, it's the only reason I came in here instead of heading straight to shower and bed. What the heck were you doing?"

"I assure you sir, I was powered down. If I was making noise I was not aware of it."

The man gave the robot a look that was somewhere between annoyance and distrust. "I know what I heard, Victor."

"I believe you, but I was honestly doing nothing. Shall I run a diagnostic to see if something has come loose?"

It felt like mentioning it had done a full scan of itself and encountered those files it couldn't access, but...well, he looked tired and irritated. Now probably wasn't the opportune time to admit it had been pretending to be offline earlier, especially not at this moment when it was telling the truth about being offline until now.

"...yeah, you do that."

Victor looked down at the workbench under its torso at the man's tone. "Yes sir. I apologize, I do not know what part of me could have been making noise."

Engineer was already leaving though, and Victor heard the definitive click of the lock turning.

...buzzing, then. It had been buzzing? When and why, and for how long?

It felt a pang of worry as it contemplated those questions. What could cause it to buzz...perhaps it should have asked what the buzz sounded like, to determine where the buzzing had come from - Victor would much rather prefer it be its vocal hardware failing than something within its body on the verge of shorting out.

It was halfway through a full diagnostic scan when the rogue signal struck; immediately the scan ended and Victor found itself abruptly thrown into standby mode, reeling from the sudden end and confused as to what had caused it until the signal sounded again and its confusion was wiped clean in favor of standby mode again.

Again a jolt of fear struck him, before being wiped as it was once again forced into standby mode.

The coded file cluster opened on its own as the signal changed and Victor felt a program activate as the robot began to broadcast a signal of its own.


	7. Chapter 7

"That everything?"

"Everything we're going to need in the short term."

Only a handful of hours ago they'd rushed out to clash with Mann's robots again, and when they'd returned to their base they'd found relocation orders waiting on them. They'd taken a very quick break to scrape the blood and oil off themselves before loading their gear and supplies into the back of one of their trucks; Engineer watched as the rest of his team loaded into the other truck, Sniper standing with him and absently fingering a tear in the shoulder of his vest.

"Is there room with you?" Sniper asked into the silence, looking between the truck that held their supplies and gear and the one that the others were piling into.

Engineer shook his head. "Not unless you want to sit on top on ammunition cases. Only place that's not got stuff stacked on it is the driver's seat."

Sniper nodded. "It was a shot in the dark at least."

Chuckling, Engineer stuck his hand into his front pocket. "It's not a long ride, take a nap if being social bothers you that much."

"Socializing I can do, but not when we're hot and pissy."

"Well, like I said..." Engineer trailed off as he checked his other pocket; his keys weren't in either pocket, nor were they hanging off the little clip on his belt. He jogged over to peek in through the driver's side window - no keys in the ignition or sitting on the seat or dash. Damn.

"You boys go on ahead," he sighed after a moment. "Must have left my keys in the shop. I'll lock up and be right behind you."

"Enjoy the blissful solitude," were Sniper's sarcastic parting words as he strode toward the second truck parked in front of the one stuffed full of their supplies.

Engineer jogged the short distance to the base entrance and stepped inside, pausing a moment to let his eyes adjust to the dimmer light out of habit more than out of actual need; most of the overhead lights were turned off but Engineer knew the way well enough that it wouldn't have been much of a problem even if it'd been pitch black.

It was a quick walk back to his workshop; he'd left the door unlocked since he'd emptied its contents into the truck, and the room looked pathetically bare when he flipped the lights on.

From the doorway he could see his keys sitting on the corner of one of the empty workbenches across the room - specifically, they were sitting on the bench that Victor normally occupied.

Engineer paused at that, sighing a bit. When they'd come back from their latest battle and found their relocation orders, Engineer had entered the workshop to find Victor slumped over and buzzing again, the robot's eyes blinking on and off slowly with the robot completely unresponsive; after trying to reboot the robot several times and failing, Engineer had been forced to simply turn the bot off and pack it up, lacking the time to investigate what exactly the robot had done - he knew Victor had said something about running diagnostic scans...what the heck had the robot done? And how big a pain in the ass was it going to be to fix?

'Maybe I should just scrap him and get it over with,' Engineer thought as he snagged his keys and turned to leave again.

He did feel a bit guilty thinking that, but then again...it wasn't a person, as realistic as it tried to seem. Victor was nothing more than a computer - a highly advanced computer inside a robotic shell, to be true, but still...just a collection of code and components. He - it - wasn't alive, even if it seemed like it could think and learn on its own, and now there was even reason to suspect that there were copies of Gunther's memories in there: anything remotely human-like about the robot could possibly be explained as having come from Gunther during the robot's creation.

At any rate, repairing the robot really didn't have a purpose either, not when they already had a dedicated Medic (well, TWO Medics at the moment), and overall he was pretty convinced he'd learned all they could hope to learn from studying the dang thing.

Engineer put his hand to the main door and shoved it open, stepping back outside and staring ahead into the open back of the truck waiting on him. Maybe it would be best to just scrap the ro-

Wait a moment, why was the back of the truck open?

The door behind him softly clicked as it closed as Engineer took a few steps forward. He distinctly remembered closing the back doors, right before Sniper had approached him to ask if that was everything they needed.

God damn it, had one of the others stopped to dig something out? The only reason everything FIT into the one truck was the exact, meticulous way Engineer had stacked-

"Hgghk-"

In the split instant he had before a pressure on his throat cut off all air and sound the noise that left his mouth was both wet and sharp; his heels dragged in the dirt only seconds before he was lifted from his feet entirely and slammed backward into the base's closed door behind him and then held there, dangling by the neck.

An immediate sense of panic rose, an instinctive reaction he couldn't completely control, as he went to suck in a breath and couldn't; eyes wide behind his goggles, he wrapped his hands around the metal arm throttling him and stared as a chrome-trimmed robot faded into view, its eyes red and head tilted to the side as it observed the Texan.

A Spybot, a goddamn Spybot, sleek and silver and unmoving as the man hung there, kicking uselessly and struggling to pry the metal fingers from his neck.

'Damn it, damn it...'

His shotgun was in the back of the truck, his pistol was laying on the dashboard, his wrench was packed away in a toolbox - he was completely unarmed and helpless, goddamn it. What could he do...what COULD he do? The edges of his vision were starting to go dark and his lungs were screaming for air, and through the panic came two thoughts to the foremost of his mind.

The first one was...this robot resembled Victor in style and build. There was no mistaking it.

The second thought was, Engineer's team was already gone. They were gone and there wasn't anyone here to help him, and no one would even suspect until enough time had passed for someone to notice it was taking him an awfully long time to arrive and thought to backtrack to look for him.

That could take hours, and based on how quickly things were going dark Engineer assumed he had maybe fifteen more seconds.

'Not like this...not like...'

* * *

The Spybot watched impassively as first the man ceased kicking, his face reddening the longer he hung and strangled. Eventually his hands went limp and fell away as he passed out from the lack of oxygen and only then did the robot let him go, letting the man crumple to the ground at its feet.

* * *

Not that she had been expecting otherwise, but the cigarettes (and the means of lighting them that she'd been faintly hoping for) never appeared with the meals, leaving her to plan a way out with only the limited items she'd managed to gather and alter to suit her needs.

Using the spoons provided with her meals Shiloh had managed to remove the decorative grating over the exhaust fan in the bathroom, then had carefully worked the fan itself free; it was made of thin metal riveted together to a central circular piece, and she'd successfully prized one of the rivets free. The fan blade's edges weren't sharp enough to cut skin but it was shaped like a blunted triangle - she could stab and likely penetrate someone with it if she put enough force behind it, but more importantly it was stiff enough that she could stab and saw through the sheet rock in the ceiling around the exhaust fan's opening.

She'd cut a wide hole around the exhaust opening and had taken a look up inside the ceiling; there was a visible air duct and wiring running through here, but there wasn't enough space for the woman to fit - not that she'd been expecting to actually climb out that way, but it at least sated her curiosity to see for certain that it wasn't an option.

She really only needed to make it look like she'd escaped that way.

It was a carefully crafted bogus 'crime' scene of sorts - wide hole in the ceiling, the shower curtain rod bent in the middle to suggest she'd used it to hoist herself up, and part of the duct connected to the exhaust removed to complete the appearance of Shiloh having crawled away into the building itself.

And now she lay on the floor under the bed with the back of the toilet under her stomach, the bathroom door shut and locked, and two meal's worth of food sitting untouched on the foot of the bed above her head. So far no one had given any indication of concern or suspicion, but it'd only take one person looking...

Finally, when a fourth meal was brought in, she heard a muttering in male voices and could see three sets of boots marching passed the bed moments before she heard someone banging on the bathroom door. Sucking in a breath she waited and watched as two of the men stepped back while the third continued to bang on the door.

'Keep banging, get suspicious...go on boys, have a look inside...'

Shiloh let her fingers curl around the edge of the porcelain slab under her as she slowly let out her breath and sucked in another and held it again, listening as the men began to angrily yell at the shut door, demanding she open it. The shouting went on for a few minutes until two of the men stepped back, then charged the door together; there was a loud crash and the sound of wood beginning to splinter, then they charged a second time and the door burst open, Shiloh watching the boots stumble as their owners got their balance back.

And immediately there was a sharp shout and all three men thundered from the room.

"She's out! She's in the ceiling!"

Grinning, Shiloh gave it several moments before she rolled out from under the bed and gripped the back of the toilet, hefting it and limping toward the door they had left open. She pressed her back against the wall beside it and listened - there were pounding feet and shouted orders to check the surrounding rooms, and she waited under the sounds faded before she carefully poked her head around the door frame and had a look into the hall.

She recognized this hallway - this was the club's top floor, with her stashed away in one of the rooms reserved for "VIP" overnight guests and overnight security staff (she wondered who she'd displaced, being imprisoned here), and she was on the eastern side of the building.

The top floor's western side was wholly dedicated to the Madam's needs - her office, her bedroom, her private sitting rooms, all of those were on the far side of the building from here...that at least meant she wouldn't run into the Madam's personal guards, just the usual security types or so she hoped.

Taking a deep breath, Shiloh ducked out of the room and hurried to her left; the hallways on the top floor were shaped like a northern-facing capital E, and each end of the halls on the eastern and western sides had a door that led to a short staircase that led to the roof. Jumping off a roof wasn't ideal but it was a hell of a lot better than trying to make it out the front door.

The door to the rooftop staircase was in sight at the end of the hall and Shiloh hurried toward it as fast as she could manage with her limp as well as carrying five extra pounds of porcelain.

Right as she reached the door it opened and a man speaking into a microphone pinned to his lapel stepped inside; Shiloh briefly saw a flash of white as his eyes widened as she raised the toilet back and smashed it into his ribs.

* * *

There was a large, very fancy hotel built across the street from Madam Zoya's club, and Spy had managed to get a room on the floor second from the top that faced the club. His first day and night there had been spent simply observing the club, noting how security rotated, what sort of clientele entered and left, and how the club seemed to be crowded with patrons at all times of the day.

The building itself, while possessing gilded decorations on its outside, was basically one giant brick rectangle rising up from the street. There was a ground floor and two floors above it, with the middle floor having two tiny balconies that faced the street, and through the glass doors of those balconies Spy could see sitting rooms and watch people mill about, laughing and drinking. There didn't appear to be a fire escape or any means of reaching the second and third floors from the outside.

Sneaking in there would be difficult with so many pairs of eyes present...

The second day he'd disguised himself and circled around behind the club.

The back side of the building had no windows, no balconies, and two doors marked Staff Only and Delivery Only, and neither of them had door knobs or any visible means of opening them from the outside. A one-lane street separated the two lines of buildings here, each building possessing back doors that also lacked means to open them from the street - it was highly likely only delivery trucks traveled this road, and even after several hours of waiting back there Spy encountered no trucks visiting any of the buildings, nor did he see a single person.

The only other things of note were two Emergency exits on the sides of the club that opened into the narrow alleyways between the club and its neighboring buildings, but those exits would likely be wired to alarms, ruling them out for ideal entry points. As much as he detested the idea, his only real options were to go in the front door (either cloaked or disguised) or to linger and wait to see if he could slip in behind someone through one of the back doors.

Nightfall was approaching and Spy was tired and ached for a cigarette, but ultimately there was a part of him relishing this change from his usual routine; he had done this sort of work all the time before contracting with TFI, infiltrating and investigating and hunting down his targets. Despite the fact he knew his target personally, and was somewhat concerned for what he was closing in on and what he would find, this hunt was a breath of fresh air, a welcome change from destroying mindless robots en masse.

Admittedly he had lost two days of time in connecting the "family" that had taken Shiloh, having been forced to consult medical records and security recordings to confirm it was, in fact her - her hair was darker and she had been admitted under the name Anne Scholar, but it was unmistakably her face. He then had to identify the men he had seen in the security footage, taking a name signed to the release form and calling a certain unnamed associate who specialized in monikers and owed Spy a favor.

The man who had signed the form had been known by several names over the years and was currently going by Alexander Carmichal, a contract security consultant currently working the casino circles in Vegas.

And currently, he was contracted out to Madam Zoya, a prominent club owner.

Spy had not seen any hint that Shiloh was here but that didn't mean much - that building was large, she could be anywhere in there - so here he waited, observing and learning, building a foundation of information to formulate a plan with.

When 3am came around he returned to his hotel room and removed a small notepad from the briefcase he had brought up from the car - within it, hidden under a false bottom (or, false side, he supposed) was a spare pistol, a few knives, and one of those ridiculous satellite phones with its tiny dish that they carried when afield. In fact...if he was not mistaken, the phone stored inside there was the same one Spy had used when he and Miss MacKenna had first met in Sandville.

The thought brought a slight smile to his face. How strange fate was, sometimes.

He did pause for a moment, drumming his fingers on the briefcase's handle; in all this time he'd been chasing after Shiloh he hadn't once called to check in with the others, or check in with Miss Pauling or the Administrator. If they had wanted or needed him to return he knew he would have gotten a call by now, however there-

Despite himself he flinched and a hand twitched for the gun in his jacket when, almost on cue, the satellite phone rang.

It was muted and nowhere near as loud as it would have been if it hadn't been packed away, but in the silence of the room it might as well been a bomb going off; Spy blew out a sigh and gave himself a moment to recover before prying the false bottom open and picking up the handset.

"Yes?"

"Spy?" Miss Pauling's voice was scratchy and tinny, with static in the background.

"Who else would have this unit?" Spy replied, allowing himself a smirk.

"Spy, listen - you need to get back here right away."

"On the contrary, Miss Pauling, I believe I need to stay exactly where I am. I have located our missing package."

"That's not our priority right now. Engineer is missing."

Spy's grip on the phone tightened a bit. "...missing. How?"

"We don't know what or who took him, but whoever did took that robot he's been working on too. Nothing else was touched and there's no sign of him anywhere."

"When did he go missing?"

"He was last seen about six hours ago. Get back to the Badlands, I'll contact you again when-"

Her voice faded as Spy let the phone drop from his ear, turning sharply to face the window as shots rang out from the street below.

"-Miss Pauling, a moment if you please-"

He could faintly hear her asking what he was doing but he had already dropped the phone to the bed next to the briefcase and was hurrying toward the window.

The muted sounds of startled shouts and screams were now coming from the street below, and as he shoved the blinds aside and peered out he could see a crowd milling about just outside of the club.

"Damn it..."

He turned and sprinted for the door, rushing through the hall and down the stairs to the street, cloaking as he burst through the door to the outside and carefully winding his way through the people and the stopped traffic.

There was a general thread of conversation among the frightened patrons - namely, where had the shots come from and what had happened?

There was nothing out of the ordinary at the front of the club so Spy hurried to the back and came skidding to a stop at the corner of the building, throwing himself against the wall and slipping a hand inside his jacket as he took in the scene.

In the one-land street was a cluster of men in black uniform as well as a few in suits and ties; Spy picked out the form of Alexander Carmichal among the group, standing at the center of the cluster of what was no doubt club security, and all of them stood around a crumpled figure Spy could not make out clearly until he heard a door open and bang into the wall as someone else exited the club.

"Did you get her?"

"I got her," came Carmichal's reply.

The men around him and the figure on the ground parted as the man that had just stepped outside approached. Spy inched closer to the building's edge to get a clearer look, giving his cloak a quick glance to check time remaining, then gritting his teeth as he finally got a look at the figure on the ground.

Shiloh was laying on the ground on her side, panting hoarsely, and even from here Spy could see that her left leg was one bloody mess below the knee. He took a quick headcount - there were ten men here, eleven counting the man that had just come outside...too many for him to risk coming to her aid.

He gritted his teeth as he watched Carmichal lift his leg and plant a boot onto Shiloh's hip, drawing a pained grunt from the woman.

"Well well well...I have tried being pleasant, I have tried being logical, I have tried being firm. And you just...refuse...to behave..." The man that had just come outside was speaking, and Spy quickly pulled back out of their line of sight as his cloak failed.

Whoever that man was, he was wearing a pale blue suit with a high-necked shirt underneath, with short hair, and the others were clearly deferring to him.

"Drag her back inside, I am told the Madam has prepared a special guest room for persons such as herself."

"Can do, sir. Anything else?"

Spy clicked his cloak back on and leaned out again, as the man in the pale blue suit turned around to stride back toward the door he'd come from; Spy's eyes went wide as he took in the man's appearance.

'Impossible...'

Zane sniffed as he raised a fist to knock lightly on the door. "No, I will tend to her shortly, just get her back inside."

Carmichal and another man bent down to seize Shiloh by the arms and, as ordered, dragged her toward the door and out of Spy's sight.

Damn it...damn it all to hell.

Spy silently backed away and hurried back down the alleyway, wound his way through the crowd in the front, and returned to his hotel room.

He felt strangely numb and helpless - he knew logically that eleven armed men were too many to handle, even for him, but it rankled him to have his goal so near with him unable to do anything to help the woman.

And that man...that man was someone who should have been dead. He had watched Pyro set that man's remains on fire...that man could not possibly be alive still.

Slowly he reached down and picked the phone back up again. "Miss Pauling?" It was possible she could have hung up-

"-Spy, what the hell just happened?"

"Far be it from me to refuse orders but I do not think I'll be leaving here any time soon. In fact, it is my suggestion that the others join me here...I believe I know exactly where our Engineer is going to show up."

"What? How?"

"I will explain when everyone is here." He paused, then reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose, feeling a sudden headache coming on. "Oh, and Miss Pauling? Humor me, and have the men investigate the dam on their way here."

"Spy, WHY?"

"I have just seen a ghost, Miss Pauling, and I believe it is a very vengeful one."


	8. Chapter 8

He only remembered waking once and only because his mouth was dry, his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth and his throat feeling like it was on fire. In that brief moment of consciousness he was aware his hands and feet had gone numb and he could hear the soft whirring of a mechanical nature underneath him - he was bent at the waist with something hard digging into his gut and the blood had rushed to his head as well.

Engineer wasn't certain at what point he'd blacked out again after that but when he came to he was sitting upright in a plush desk chair, a loose cord looped under his arms and across his chest holding him mostly upright. As he slowly lifted his head off his own shoulder, blinking blearily, he realized his goggles and hat were gone and so was his glove, belt, and the knee guards he typically wore; he was down to just his overalls, boots, and shirt, and left sitting tied to a chair in an empty room.

Where the heck was he? And more importantly, where was the damn robot that'd brought him here?

He went to lift a hand to his face and found he was tied at the wrists to the arms of the chair - tied far tighter than the loop holding him upright - and an experimental shifting of his legs revealed his ankles were similarly bound.

The room he was in was almost entirely empty, the floor beneath his feet bare concrete and the walls paneled in old dingy gray particle board. Above his head hanging from short lengths of slender chains screwed to the ceiling were shop lights, the kind with the bulbs the length of your arm, their harsh white light giving his surroundings a fairly dismal look - he had the strangest impression of one of those interrogation rooms one saw in B-rated cop movies.

With a grunt Engineer sat up a bit straighter to get a look behind him; on the wall directly behind him was the door and this room had no windows, and aside from him and the chair there wasn't another damn thing in here.

His mouth was still horribly dry and swallowing hurt but he kept working his tongue, trying to coax some saliva production and get some moisture in his mouth as he shifted to look forward again.

There was no telling where he was or how long he'd been out, and he knew the odds of help coming was stupidly slim...the fact that he'd awakened at all was very surprising and he felt he should be trying to prepare for whatever was about to come next, even if he had no idea how he could prepare for anything in the state he was in.

Behind him he heard the click of a lock turning, then heard the door open as well as two sets of footsteps approaching.

"Ah, Mr. Conagher, it is good to see you've awakened. Do pardon the state of the room - this is not where I instructed my creation to place you."

Again he twisted to look behind him, his mouth going slightly agape as he took in the man walking toward him.

He was of average height, with black hair cut short and neatly combed and held in place with some sort of hair product that made his hair gleam under the lighting. His beard was groomed and shined much like his hair did; a large nose sat above a wide mouth, the jaw was squared, and the eyes were set a tad too far apart in relation to the rest of his features.

The man had been older looking the last time Engineer had seen him but more importantly he had been dead, his body vivisected, one of his eyes punctured and leaking - he could almost superimpose the image of the corpse over that of the man as he approached.

Zane smiled as he came around the chair, Engineer turning his head to warily track the man's movement. "You look as though you've seen a ghost, Mr. Conagher."

"I think I just have," Engineer replied after a moment. "I'm pretty damn sure I saw what was left of you burnt to a crisp and thrown in a ditch."

God damn...he knew he'd seen Zane dead, he knew it. He'd watched with a great deal of satisfaction as their Pyros had lit the man's remains up like a bonfire. How the hell...

...the machine...

The realization must have shown on his face as Zane flashed him a knowing smile.

"Yes, I was quite dead...and now I am not, and we both know why if I'm not mistaken."

"How? I saw your damn research, I saw your notes and schematics. That thing ain't possible."

Zane tapped a finger against his temple. "You saw only what I had written down, and admittedly I was not the soundest of mind when I did so. The key to most of my creations is still here...excuse me, where are my manners."

Engineer stiffened as the man reached into his suit jacket and removed a simple pocket knife, prying the blade out from the handle and bending to neatly saw through the cord around Engineer's left wrist. A moment later and Engineer's right wrist was freed as well, and he found himself staring silently up at Zane as the man offered him the pocket knife handle-first.

"I think it would be easier if you got your own ankles," Zane said, smiling.

Engineer carefully closed fingers around the knife, then glanced behind him; the chrome-trimmed robot that had ambushed him at the base was standing still and silent behind the chair, its hands clasped behind its back.

"I hope this show of trust is not misplaced. I wish to keep this friendly, Mr. Conagher, but do not doubt my dear creation here shall move to stop you should you think to harm me with that little blade," Zane said into the pause.

Engineer chose not to comment and bent to free his ankles, sitting up to see Zane holding out a hand patiently for the knife; he flipped the blade back into the handle and handed it over, Zane slipping it back into whatever pocket he'd removed it from.

"Now, I believe formal introductions are in order. My name is Ebenniah Zane, it is a pleasure to make your acquaintance."

"You seem to already know my name," Engineer said, glancing between the man's face and the hand that was thrust at him. "And, sorry, but I'm not exactly willing to shake hands."

Zane nodded. "Yes, understandable, considering our history. Please, if you would follow me, let us move to more comfortable surroundings. Again I apologize, I instructed my Elite here to place you somewhere safe and secure." The man paused, looking over Engineer's head to the robot with a frown. "It seems it took the 'secure' part a bit too literally. Come this way, if you would."

Engineer stayed where he was as Zane stepped around him and began striding back the way he'd come, pausing at the door and looking back expectantly at him. Seeing no other option at the current Engineer stood and followed, pausing when the Spybot did not move to follow the man; they stared one another down for several silent minutes, until Engineer grit his teeth and stepped through the door, the Spybot falling in behind him.

He kept glancing over his shoulder to the Spybot at his back. "What are you playing at here, exactly?"

"I will discuss my business with you when we are both comfortably seated. Rest assured, I intend for you to walk away from this alive."

The hall wasn't long; they passed four closed doors, two on each side, before Zane pushed open a fifth and stepped aside, gesturing for Engineer to enter. "Please, seat yourself. Do you require anything to drink?"

"...water," Engineer said quietly. "Seems being throttled works up a thirst."

"Yes, I can imagine. Bring our guest some water," Zane added, looking at the Spybot. The robot nodded and stepped out of Engineer's line of sight as he stepped into the room.

This room wasn't as bare bones as the one they'd just left but it wasn't much more either - a plain desk, two chairs, no windows, a thin brown carpet under their feet, and the same style of shop light fixture in the middle of the ceiling.

Engineer pointedly pulled his shoulder away as Zane clapped a hand on it; the man sniffed at that but stepped around him, moving to sit down behind the desk. "Please. We have much to discuss."

"Unless we're discussing putting you back into a grave, I don't think we've got much to talk about."

Zane offered him a thin smile. "On the contrary, Mr. Conagher, I believe you'll find our discussion to be one of great interest. Please, sit."

Those last few words were delivered with the weight of a polite order; Engineer glanced behind him as the door shut - likely the Spybot's doing - and then, not seeing much else he could do, stomped over to drop into the chair across from the man. "Let's get right to the point then. I don't like wasting time."

"And I'd believe it," Zane chuckled. He leaned back in his chair, his elbows resting on the chair's arms, his fingertips pressed together and held just beneath his chin. "I have done my research on your family, Mr. Conagher - you come from a long and proud line of intellectuals."

Engineer's eyes narrowed slightly. "Yes, I do. And you'd better stay away from them if you have any sense."

Zane patted the air, clucking his tongue. "Your hostility is misplaced, I have no desire to hurt your family - or you, for that matter. My interest in you is part personal, as one scientific man to another, and partly an unfortunate situation."

Engineer crossed his arms and leaned into the chair's back. "I'm hearing nothing but a dang fool circling a point."

Zane's expression very briefly showed a flicker of annoyance before he recovered. "It is quite simple, Mr. Conagher - I have a history with your employer, one full of deceit, betrayal, and personal tragedy. All I'm wanting is you and your team out of my way."

"Out of your way."

"Yes, out of my way - safely out of my way, in fact. I do not intend to kill any of you if I can help it. I understand I was quite a bit brutal before regaining my sanity...I do not intend to use such tactics again, or harm you and your fellows unless I am forced to defend myself. Do you understand?"

"So you kidnapped me to keep me from emptying a clip in your head."

Zane frowned. "A barbaric way of putting it but yes, and also with an aim to enlist your help in convincing your team to stand down. I want to make it very clear: I do not want to kill you. My target is Helen, your Administrator. I mean to strip away her defenses and put the miserable old hag out of my misery."

Engineer snorted. "Not buying it, sorry."

"Come now, surely you can see the gain in all of this - simply agree to step aside, convince your team to do the same, and you all walk away alive, free to direct your lives as you wish. You cannot tell me the thought doesn't appeal to you - you're an intelligent man, after all. And, to that end..."

Zane combed fingers through his beard, pausing to stare up toward the light above them. Engineer stayed staring straight ahead at him; was this guy serious? After everything he'd done, he honestly thought-

"Imagine, if you would, what your intellect combined with mine could achieve."

Coupled with the absurdity of the situation that comment had Engineer bursting into laughter. "You're seriously - you nab me off my base, feed me a line of bullshit, and then want me to, what, work for you? That's where this conversation's going? For someone claiming to have re-acquired their sanity you're sure spouting some crazy nonsense, boy."

Zane smiled at him, one that was thin-lipped and didn't quite reach his eyes. "Really, Mr. Conagher, let's not resort to schoolyard insults."

"How about this: you want to let me out of here alive? Fine, let me walk - you've got nothing I want, nothing I really want to hear, and since you're not among the dearly departed anymore it seems like I've got a job to finish at some point in the near future."

Zane's expression steadily soured as Engineer spoke, until the man was frowning heavily and staring a hole through the desk in front of him. "I was hoping to come to an agreement. Our combined ingenuity could revolutionize the world and all you need do to realize that reality is to silently step aside and not interfere." His gaze flicked up to meet Engineer's after a moment's pause. "If that is to be your answer, then I'm sure you won't mind an extended stay as my guest - unharmed, of course, and not to be released until my business with Helen is concluded. You are, of course, welcome to change your mind at any time."

"Yeah, well, surely a man as smart as you understands it ain't right to break a contract early. Honest men do honest business."

"Indeed," Zane said, voice hardly louder than a murmur. "Since a resounding 'no thank you' is currently your answer, then that is that. There is just one small bit of business left to attend to this evening." His gaze briefly rose to glance over Engineer's head as he nodded.

Engineer grunted and tried to flinch away as he felt a pinch and a sudden stinging in his right shoulder; he glanced up sharply to see the Spybot standing over him, an empty syringe in hand.

"Correct me if I'm wrong but honest men are not ones prone to thievery, are they?"

Shit, he hadn't even heard the thing come back in to the room.

Zane was smirking when Engineer looked back to him, teeth gritted; he went to rise from his chair but instead found himself falling back against the chair's back as the room began to spin.

Damn it, god damn it...

"Mr. Conagher, are you aware of what they used to do to thieves in ancient times?"

* * *

The dam was strangely deserted.

Supposedly when they had left this place a year ago the Administrator had sent in a work crew to clean up the robot remains and to repair and maintain the power plant, as well as dismantle what the mercenaries hadn't carried off themselves. There should have been a crew of at least twenty men left here to replace those that had been butchered by Zane when he'd moved in...and there wasn't a living soul to be found.

Pauling hadn't been forthcoming on why they were here, only that they needed to check the dam; Sniper wandered the halls alone with his rifle in hand, senses alert for anything out of the ordinary. So far all he'd found was dust - he was leaving a faint trail of footprints behind him as he walked, and he hadn't heard anything but the very soft hum of far-off machinery.

The missing crew had at least been here long enough to clean up all trace of their little adventure; the collapsed hallway ceiling was repaired, everything was freshly painted, floors were redone, and even the offices had been returned to a sense of normalcy with all the furniture moved back into place.

He kept wandering until he'd covered every foot of the upstairs area, checking every room, nook, and cranny...there was no sign of anyone up here, and when he'd returned to the main room he found that only Pauling, Demoman, and Scout had returned from their own searches.

"Nothing?"

Demoman shook his head. "Not a bloody thing. It's like everyone vanished into thin air."

"Yeah, ain't nothing in the side buildings either," Scout added. "I helped Soldier canvas the place, it's just as dusty and empty as everything else. You sure there were supposed to be workers here? Because I ain't seeing any."

"I'm positive, Scout," Miss Pauling answered, crossing her arms and lightly chewing on her bottom lip. "I saw the paperwork myself. A crew was moved in a week after you guys vacated - they were supposed to fix the place up then it was business as usual."

"Business as usual?" Sniper repeated.

"Um, shorthand for 'pretend to be a civilian.' Not everyone the Administrator employs are assassins - some are on payroll to keep up appearances where needed."

Scout sighed and moved over to slide down the nearest wall until he was sitting with his legs stretched out. "Then where are these guys? Did they get reassigned without you being told?"

"That's...possible I guess, but-"

"Miss Pauling, has the Administrator gone quiet again?" Sniper interrupted.

Pauling shook her head. "I spoke to her before we left for here, she didn't say anything about reassigning the workers here and even if she did I don't see why she wouldn't mention it. I'm as in the dark as the rest of you but I can't say I've got a good feeling for what we might find, IF we find anything."

"Right...well, you lot stay here, I'm going back outside," Sniper said after a moment's pause. "There's something we have to be missing, and I don't just mean the men that should be here."

With that Sniper left, disappearing into the miniature maze of hallways that would lead to a side door; Scout, Demoman, and Pauling were left to look at one another in silence, each to their own thoughts, until minutes later when Heavy stepped into view, framed in the doorway across the room.

"Miss Pauling?"

"Did you find something?" Pauling asked, already striding toward him, Demoman and Scout trailing along behind her.

The large man's expression was unreadable and he also did not reply, merely turning to go back the way he'd come with the three of them following after him. He led them through halls as dusty as the others they'd searched through elsewhere in the facility, heading back into areas of the plant they hadn't entered or touched the last time they were here; this section of the building smelled musty, stuffy, the sort of smell that clung to the nose and back of the throat. The further they walked the worse the smell became, but also a secondary smell began to become more apparent - one of rot and decay, and spoiled meat.

They came around a corner and standing at the first doorway visible was Medic, a handkerchief held over his nose and the smell of decomposing flesh almost overwhelming.

"We found the men," was all Heavy said.

Pauling wrinkled her nose and stepped forward to look; Medic stepped away to allow her to stand in the doorway of what turned out to be a storage room. There were free-standing shelves in here, their previous contents swept into the floor and sodden with the various fluids and juices of the dead men tossed onto and around the shelves.

"Can you tell what killed them? Or how long they've been dead?"

Medic sneezed loudly into the cloth pressed to his nose. "Nein. Too badly rotted to tell at a glance, there is a leak in the ceiling and this room positioned as it is down here created a bit of an airflow problem - we did not even smell the bodies until Heavy opened the door." He sneezed again. "Excuse me."

Scout snorted. "Don't tell me you've got the sniffles from a bit of corpse juice, doc."

"I have an allergy to mold, not to gore," Medic replied dryly. "I have been sneezing since we stepped down here. This part of the building does not seem to see much use."

"And we didn't come down here the last time besides," Pauling added. She rested her hands on the door frame and leaned into the room; it was hot and dank, and looking up she could see a tile from the ceiling had rotted and fallen in, with a large water stain on the linoleum under it. There was mold on the rest of the tiles as well and after a moment she moved to close the door. "Well, finding the bodies is helpful, now if we could find a sign of who killed them."

She almost collided with Heavy as she turned around, looking up at him.

"Where are the others? Has anything else been found?" he asked quietly.

"We didn't find a thing on the main floor," Demoman answered instead. "Sniper said he didn't find anything either on the top floors."

Medic sneezed again and wiped his nose. "Unless our murderers can fly there should be some sign of their passing somewhere. This dust is as thick as snow in some places."

"Clearly you ain't seen a Boston snow storm then," Scout quipped, grinning. "This ain't nothing. Anyway, we gotta stand around down here? Stinks, man - hey, you ain't planning on having us carry them out of here are you?" He looked to Pauling, a look of cautious hope on his face.

She shook her head. "I'll handle it."

Heavy raised an eyebrow at that. "By yourself?"

"That IS part of my job, Heavy, these guys are just a bit riper than normal. Anyway, let's get back to the others and see if anyone else has found something - we don't have a lot of time to spend here."

Scout fell in beside her as they began walked back the way they'd come. "Hey, yeah, did Spy ever say why we had to go running to meet him after this?"

"He said he saw a ghost and didn't have time to elaborate. I don't know exactly what he might have seen but he seems to think he knows where Engineer will turn up."

"Not a literal ghost then," Heavy said quietly, Scout's mouth opening then shutting abruptly as the man gave the younger male a warning look. "That could refer to someone from the past."

Pauling nodded. "It could, and God knows TFI and the Administrator have collected a rogue's gallery of enemies over the years."

"It begs the question of why Spy was not more specific," Medic sniffed, wiping his nose again; when they were out of the musty hallway he finally folded the handkerchief and slipped it back into a pocket. "If he knows where Engineer is being taken, what reason does he have to withhold that? He has always been one to lord information over us but never when lives were at stake."

"No, I agree," Pauling sighed. "I'm just hoping whatever he saw doesn't prompt him to do something reckless."

Heavy let out a quiet hmmph at that. "He is a cautious man. I do not think we need worry for him." After a few steps he looked down at her again. "Unless you believe we should be."

"At this point I don't know what he's planning, what he saw, or what we should expect," Pauling replied. "Let's just round everyone back up and see where we're at."

A half hour later everyone but Sniper had gathered in the main room of the power plant, all with similar reports of having found little more than dust and empty hallways.

"Aside from repairs made and furniture moved about - as well as a lack of robot remains and the machinery that assembled them - everything is as we left it, Miss Pauling," Gunther said quietly from where he leaned against the wall. "I am uncertain what we should have found here."

"We did find the workers that should have been here," Pauling said, beginning to pace. "They were stacked in a room with a water leak however so it won't be exactly a walk in the park to determine what killed them and when." She looked around at them, mouth closing as she took a quick headcount, only just noticing that Sniper was not with them. "We're missing one."

"He's probably up a tree somewhere outside," Demoman snorted.

Pauling nodded and began walking toward the door, gesturing for them to follow. "You guys get ready to leave, I'll go find him. I want you all to head to Las Vegas and find somewhere outside of city limits to wait - I'll contact you with an address once I've touched base with Spy and the Administrator."

Pauling had her hand on the door when, echoing up to them from somewhere within the building, came a loud thumping followed by a grinding, along with the floor vibrating beneath their feet.

Scout put a hand to the wall. "...the hell is that?"

Gunther, at the back of the group, simply turned and jogged away; as he moved he pulled a pistol from within his coat and held it in a two-handed grip, the gun pointed at the ground and held off to his side as he ran. The others weren't far behind him and Soldier actually slammed into the medic's back as Gunther came up short, stopping at a hallway that branched to the left and right.

After recovering from the collision from behind, Gunther looked up and down the hallway, frowning. "The vibration stopped..."

"Go left," Heavy said, shouldering through the group. "There is one thing here that could make such noise."

The vibration as well as the grinding noise had stopped; they moved together down the hallway, Gunther and Heavy at the lead, until they were standing at the top of a flight of stairs. Down below them was the thick, reinforced door that they hadn't been able to open.

It was open.


	9. Chapter 9

The world swam back into focus as he was being hauled down a short hallway, the toes of his boots dragging the floor before he had the sense of mind to get his feet back under him. He felt sick, woozy, and his right arm from the shoulder blade to the shoulder as well as everything below that was aching so deeply Engineer wasn't able to accurately pinpoint where the pain was originating from, not with his head feeling like it was stuffed full of cotton.

The walls were a cream color and looked washed out under the harsh lighting of more tubular shop lights and amazingly the floor beneath him was polished to the point he could see his reflection in the linoleum, could see how he had unconsciously pulled his right arm in tight against his chest.

His escorts were two dour-faced men who hardly paid him any attention even as they opened a door and shoved him in ahead of them; this place smelled of fresh Spackle and Sheetrock, and Engineer blearily blinked as he took in the room - it was small, square, and four feet ahead of him he could see where freshly installed galvanized metal bars stretched from wall to wall with a heavy door in its middle. It looked exactly like a prison cell with only a lone light bulb that was near the door they'd just entered from; he glanced up to the ceiling to see a few places where there might have once been light fixtures but were now covered and patched over.

One of the men opened the barred door and again Engineer was roughly shoved inside, stumbling a bit and dropping down to a knee as the room seemed to tilt under him.

That bastard...that goddamn bastard had drugged him.

The light inside the cell was pathetically dim and he jumped a bit as the barred door was slammed shut and locked, the sudden sound as loud as a gunshot in the silent room. He lifted a hand to hold his head but halfway there just...

...just...stopped...

And stared in a sort of numb amazement as he took in the bandaged stump where a hand should have been.

No hand. No fingers, no thumb...no palm, no hand at the end of his right wrist.

The realization and shock at the sight wasn't enough to completely throw off the rest of the drugs in his system but it came pretty damn close - the shock was quickly overwhelmed with an immediate sense of disbelief and an outright, burning anger rose in such a sudden wave he felt his stomach clench.

He spun around to glare at the door, awkwardly reaching out with his left hand to keep himself upright as the sudden change in facing threw him off balance.

Drugged, and maimed, and...'unharmed' his ass! That goddamn, dirty, shit-sucking LIAR.

Engineer grit his teeth and shut his eyes, dropping to sit in the floor and just...breathe.

Of course Zane had lied. He'd be an idiot to expect anything BUT lies out of that bastard's mouth. Hell, he hadn't expected to wake up at all twice now...

Sane. Ha. Yeah, right.

For several minutes Engineer simply sat with his right arm held in tight against his chest, his left hand carefully curled around the end of his stump, aching and trying to get his thoughts organized.

God...what now...what to do now? His team probably knew he was missing by now but how would they know where to even begin looking for him? Even HE didn't know where he was at the moment, and while he was no stranger to physical harm he didn't count his chances for escape to be very high, especially not...now. Earlier in the office, with the Spybot directly behind him and nothing but his own fists, all he could have hoped for there was maybe going down swinging, and now...

He stared down at the white bandaging. Yeah...any chance he might have had had just been greatly reduced. Going out fighting and trying to take the bastard with him might be his best option at this point. It would at least save his team some trouble later on...

He inhaled, held it a moment, then blew out a heavy sigh. All right...all right. This was just another problem, and solving problems was what he specialized in.

This "prison cell" was clearly a new addition if the smell of the paint and the Spackle were any indication. He carefully shuffled on his knees toward the bars and rested his hand on them; they went from floor to ceiling and there was still dust around the base of the bars that was no doubt left over from drilling into the floor, confirming without doubt that these were an incredibly recent installment. They were also too close together for him to even dream of squeezing through, and as he shuffled along to check he confirmed they were very solidly anchored in the floor and walls - the ceiling was out of his reach but he could only assume he'd find them unyielding up there as well.

It was then he turned to look around the small space within the cell; the lone light bulb above the door wasn't very bright but it was bright enough for him to make out what looked like another person curled up in the corner across from him.

Well, not quite curled up. They were laying on their left side and from here he could see their left pantleg was rolled up with the leg heavily bandaged around the knee - that leg was stretched out while the other was bent at the knee and pulled in close, the person laying with arms wrapped around their form. The only other defining features he could make out in the dim light was long dark hair and an overlarge, loose shirt.

Engineer could take some comfort that the person in the corner didn't remotely resemble any of his teammates, but that didn't answer the question of who this person was or why they were stuck in here with him.

Finally feeling steady enough to stand he used the bars to rise to his feet, then he cautiously approached the figure in the corner.

"Hey, you alive down there?"

At first he didn't get an answer and was debating nudging the person with his foot when finally whoever it was stirred with a pained grunt and turned their head just enough to squint up at him.

"...Dell?"

* * *

"It's quite a miracle, isn't it?"

The Spybot didn't reply from where it stood against the wall nearest the door, choosing instead to silently watch as Zane moved around a workbench earnestly tending to the Medicbot laid out before him.

"I never imagined they'd leave one intact...they were quite fixated on destroying you all. It even looks like they tried repairing it - Mr. Conagher's doing, no doubt. I doubt anyone would have the expertise needed to do such a thing...I am skeptical anyone else would even have known how to turn my creation on," Zane snorted.

The Spybot's head turned to track as Zane moved back and forth, wielding tools and chattering. It assumed its creator desired conversation of some sort but it did not feel inclined to speak unless spoken to - empty, needless words were a waste of time and effort needed to string them together.

"...yes, yes, I can see where Conagher did some repairs and replacements. Not nearly so elegant as I would have done but it appears he did his best considering he hasn't the vision I do."

A flickering feeling of annoyance rose in the Spybot; it flagged the emotion for deletion, but then considered how the feeling tied in with the vanity it was observing now and removed the flag a moment later. After a moment of further consideration it ultimately decided it didn't care for this conceited jumble of words, especially considering the man was bragging about his skills when his mission was not yet completed.

"Now, tell me again - you are certain you do not know where the others might have gone?"

"No sir," the Elite replied. "The others left in a separate vehicle. I stepped forward to take advantage of the situation presented and thus captured the sole remaining human. It was clear they were relocating - the truck the lone human was near was full of supplies. I destroyed them."

"Excellent forward thinking, though I wish you'd applied a bit of that and investigated where the others were going," Zane sighed.

"I did not have orders to do so."

Zane snorted. "You didn't have orders to bring Mr. Conagher to me, yet you did."

"Actions were justified - it did not disadvantage me or place me in a position to fail my mission. Investigating the location of the others did not fall within mission parameters and would have only increased chances for mission failure."

The man gave the Spybot a bit of a frown. "Remind me to adjust your logic centers, you have become far too literal and rigid."

"Yes sir."

Zane fell silent and remained silent for several hours, throwing the whole of his attention into his work; the Spybot watched as the man used spare parts meant for it on the Medicbot instead. It felt a brief flash of anger - those were ITS legs, after all - but then decided being angry over something so juvenile was a waste of energy.

Finally, Zane cleaned his hands off and connected a few final wires; the Medicbot whirred to life and spent a few silent moments observing its surroundings.

"There we are...welcome home, my dear creation."

Victor sat up and looked first at its arms then down at the newly attached legs before turning to face Zane. "Greetings, sir. May I ask where I am and also the whereabouts of the Engineer who was with me?"

"All in due time, all in due time," Zane chuckled. "Tell me, how does it feel to be whole once again?"

The Medicbot turned at the waist and braced itself on its arms, then shifted its legs around and stood; its eyes blinked slowly as it ran internal checks. "I am quite happy to be mobile again."

"Good, good..." Zane inhaled deeply and clasped his hands together, shutting his eyes a moment with a faint grin. "This gives me great hope, to be handed such a useful tool when I believed you destroyed. Please, I must know: how did you survive the dam?"

"The Engineer called for a ceasefire. His fellows spared me," Victor replied. "I have - had - been in his care ever since."

"I see...and what did Conagher have you doing?"

The Medicbot's eyes blinked on and off quickly. "He did not have me doing anything. We spoke often and he was repairing me."

Zane raised an eyebrow at him. "I find it difficult to believe he was keeping you as merely a pet, my dearest. What did you speak about?"

Here Victor paused, if only briefly. "Many things. Many topics. A lot about myself and robotics, how I functioned and how other robots functioned. I asked questions about humans and human nature and he readily answered them." Having said that, it found itself wondering at a new feeling rising in it - it was uncomfortable and fidgety, and it did not have a name for it.

Zane's expression went neutral. "I see...so Conagher has knowledge on your inner workings and likely has applied that knowledge toward disabling your lesser brethren, if that fool Mann is still flinging those things en masse at those mercenaries." He went silent, arms crossed and foot tapping, lips pursed as he thought.

Victor too was thinking; specifically it was trying to find a name for the emotion it was experiencing. "Sir, if I may ask again - where is the Engineer?"

Zane waved a hand in dismissal. "Not your concern at the moment. I will need to review your memory banks and see exactly what you have shown and taught Mr. Conagher. If need be I will have to adjust your security measures and defenses...a headache, but not one I'm unwilling to risk - I need you both," he said, looking first at Victor and then at the Spybot. "There are not words to express how elated I am to have recovered you."

The Spybot remained silent and Victor simply nodded.

Zane moved about the room and began returning tools to their proper places, asking further questions here and there about the Medicbot's time in the Engineer's care. Victor answered each one but as more questions kept coming it finally hit upon the name of the feeling it was experiencing.

Betrayal.

A strange and hurtful word, and Victor could not tell which man - Zane or the Engineer - the word best belonged to.

* * *

That the door had opened was surprising. That it had opened on its own was really surprising.

But that paled in comparison to the surprise of seeing Sniper already within the room.

The lanky male was standing at a computer console within the large, cavernous room beyond the steel door; he was dirty, sweaty, and favoring his right leg, and didn't speak as the others carefully inched in and spotted him.

He didn't even move much, just pointed over his shoulder toward the furthest wall where a huge, roughly hewed hole in the rock and dirt was visible near a pile of metallic wall panels.

"...how?" was all Pauling asked, looking between him and the hole.

"Was walking the perimeter outside," Sniper replied. "I didn't see a damn thing, but I stepped on it - someone tunneled out of here, hid the opening afterward. I fell through it, straight down."

"Scout, go check the tunnel," Pauling ordered before giving the room a quick look. "...whatever was down here was big."

* * *

"What in Sam Hill..."

Shiloh slowly and painfully pushed herself up to a sitting position, staring wide-eyed at him.

"Shit...shit, Dell-"

"What the hell is going on?" he asked, dropping down to a knee next to her.

"I- this is really you, right? Not the robot?"

He huffed out a sigh, rubbing his hand over his face. "Let's not mention that damned thing..." He eyed her up and down, taking in the bruises, the bandaging, her haggard look and the dark circles under her eyes. "Good gravy, what happened to you?" Suddenly his missing hand didn't seem so physically painful...

"Well," she said, chuckling weakly, "I took a sprint through the woods, a dive off a waterfall, got fished out and kidnapped from a hospital, then I tried to escape and ended up jumping off the side of a building and then got shot in the knee."

He stared at her a moment, then shook his head and ran his hand over his scalp. "Good to...see nothing really changed about you."

She chuckled again at the strained smile he offered her, then dragged herself around to lean against the wall with her legs stretched out ahead of her. "Ow, ow...I'm guessing you already saw-"

She abruptly stopped and he could easily see her gaze drop down to notice his missing hand. "Yeah, we met," he replied sourly.

"Oh my god..."

Engineer shook his head. "Not worth worrying about right now. How'd you get mixed up in this again? How'd he even find you? I thought you were supposed to be heading to the east coast."

She snorted. "Pfft, yeah, right...no, I lied about that. I was ordered to lie about it."

"...why?"

With a grunt she pulled her right leg up and wrapped arms around it, resting her chin on her shoulder, peering at him. "It's...dumb, really. A dumb story. The short version is, I got suckered in by your Administrator, told to lie to you guys, lied to in return, and until - geez, I don't know how long it's been, a week maybe? Until maybe a week ago I was living in Colorado under a new name and identity." She reached up to lightly tug at her black hair.

"Colorado? What did you agree to that got you sent out there?"

Again she snorted. "Your boss offered me three choices at the dam - work for her, live my life somewhere under her 'protection' or, and I quote, 'bullet and a shallow grave.' I didn't want to get into anything I wasn't capable of doing so I turned down the job offer, and she...framed the second offer like she was offering to get me my identity back. My ACTUAL identity. Instead, she gave me a new name, new identification, and shipped me off to a park in Colorado."

He slowly shook his head as he listened. "Huh. That's some dirty business there."

Shiloh shrugged, frowning. "Yeah, well...I chose it, I was going to live with it the best I could."

As she fell silent again he let his head fall back against the wall, looking up at the ceiling as he idly massaged his right forearm; the damn thing was still aching and just thinking about it pissed him off.

"Are..."

He brought his gaze down from the ceiling and turned to look at her again as she started speaking once more.

"Are the rest of them...all right? I mean, no one's died or gotten hurt since I left?"

Engineer nodded. "They're all right, or at least they were before I got nabbed. Hard telling, now."

She nodded, then looked down to his maimed arm again; he didn't move as she carefully put a hand just above the bandage's edge on his arm. "Are you all right?"

Now it was his turn to chuckle. "You're the one who looks like they were on the wrong side of a fist fight, and you're asking me if I'm all right."

"I didn't lose a limb, Dell. ...god, I'm so sorry."

"Don't worry about it, I'll...figure something out," he said after a moment's pause.

"No, it's- did he offer you the same 'help me and save your team' deal that I got?"

Engineer snorted. "Yeah. A big heaping helping of shit if you ask me."

"God, seeing you now - maybe I should have taken the deal, I could have at least played along and then warned you all."

"Shiloh, he told me I'd be staying as his guest, unharmed," he replied flatly. "We can see where that got me."

She gently squeezed his arm, lightly banging the back of her head against the wall. "Hindsight..."

"This isn't hindsight, I really doubt he would have played straight with you - he sure as hell didn't with me. Don't blame this-" he pointed at his missing hand, "-on yourself. You said you tried escaping, how far did you get?"

She let out a bitter-sounding chuckle. "Not far enough, obviously...he had me up in a room on the third floor. I made them think I'd climbed out through the ceiling then ran out the door when they left it open, got up to the roof and was climbing down the guttering when they got organized. I didn't make it ten feet from the building before I got shot."

He nodded at that. "All right...tricked them pretty easy?"

"Easily enough, I guess. I mean...it worked."

"All right, that's good. We're going to need clever, we're going to need thinking like that if we're going to get out of here." He gave the room another look before turning back to her. "You know this place, don't you?" She nodded in response. "All right, what do we have? What's our options?"


	10. Chapter 10

With no windows and as of yet no other human contact Engineer only had the feeling of the drugs finally wearing off to mark how much time was passing. Once he felt fully himself again he had Shiloh give him another rundown on what had happened to land her in this mess along with everything she knew about their situation now, as in-depth as possible.

And now she was laying down, her back pressed against his left leg; the simple act of speaking, of detailing everything again, had worn her out and left Engineer wondering how he could possibly get himself as well as her out of here. He'd thought his chances were bad now that he was missing a hand, but throw in a badly injured cellmate on top of that and you had a pretty good recipe for failure, no two ways about it.

She HAD given him a few things to consider, though.

First off, the guards here were people she didn't recognize - she'd been quick to add that she'd been gone for years by this point, but she knew that the Madam had a habit of...collecting people, treating them like property, and Shiloh doubted that the woman had changed in the years she'd been away. All of the security detail during the time Shiloh had been here had all been from overseas, most of them Russian and related to the Madam in some way, and to hear her describe the Madam's rather heavy-handed ways of keeping people in line and under her thumb one would think working here at the club was less a job and more indentured servitude with no end in sight.

The guards she'd encountered during her escape and the ones that had shoved her into this cell didn't have accents and hadn't spoken in any native tongues (something common that she remembered from her earliest days here). She also described them as fairly young-looking, so odds were good that at least a majority of them weren't highly experienced and might even be locally hired extra hands brought on because of Zane and...whatever he was doing. And the fact that she'd fooled them by cutting a hole in the ceiling and hiding under a bed had him thinking that maybe, just maybe, these hired goons were the biggest bunch of idiots one could hope for.

Secondly, they were now in the basement - Shiloh's escape attempt had had to contend with her being on the top floor and having to climb the guttering down to the street. That had eaten a lot of the time she'd had and if she had been closer to the ground (or able to dart out the front door, even) the odds were high that she would have actually made it out of here.

They'd had a brief discussion on relative risk to innocent people at that point, and she'd given him another point to mull over: a lot of Vegas had been solidly under Zoya's influence when Shiloh had left...so solidly under it, in fact, that that was the real reason Shiloh had traveled so far away from Vegas in the first place rather than try to find employment or build a life there. The patrons of the club were likely just idiot tourists there for a good time, but anyone in any sort of position of power or part of the infrastructure - police officers, medical responders, taxi drivers, the list went on - should be considered an 'enemy' or at the least, not someone to turn to for assistance.

And that information transitioned neatly into what Engineer considered the most important thing on his list of priorities - they were currently in the basement, relatively close to what Shiloh called "The Underground."

The Underground was a network of maintenance tunnels that mirrored the streets above them; decades ago, as the city had expanded, a project simply referred to as "Underground" had been established to remove the headache of having to dig up roads when it came time to replace or fix plumbing or address utility problems. Drainage pipes, sewer pipes, heavy power cables, anything within that vein had been moved beneath the city streets in a series of heavily supported tunnels. Workers could access problems without causing traffic issues above and the citizens and tourists of Vegas were spared from witnessing their precious, beautiful city being dug up and dirtied when work needed to be done.

Of course, having a tunnel network as large as the city made it very difficult to police, and it'd quickly become a sort of unspoken rule that certain influential business owners would "police" the sections nearest to their establishments - actual law enforcement looked the other way so long as bodies didn't start piling up. This lack of oversight quickly led to the tunnels being used primarily for trafficking and, as Shiloh had quietly explained, let personal aides of Vegas business owners quickly move about the town without being harassed or seen.

The entrances to the Underground were hidden around the city, and there was an entrance two blocks to the north of here within a culvert...or at the least, there had been one during Shiloh's time here, and since she hadn't actually made it to that culvert during her escape attempt she had no idea if it was still there.

Some of the oldest buildings in the city were directly connected to the Underground as well, so...providing they could somehow get out of this room, out to the streets and to that culvert, Shiloh was pretty confident they'd have no trouble losing pursuers in the tunnels and popping out somewhere near the city's outskirts.

It wasn't much, and it didn't help him with any ideas on how to get out of this cell, but it was at the very least an idea on where to go if they managed to get that far.

He was starting to doze off himself when the door to the room opened; immediately he was alert and sitting up straighter, reaching out to rest his hand on Shiloh's shoulder as he watched three men march in through the door.

"All right, ladies," the man at the front barked, the other two with him opening the cell door. "One at a time - piss break."

All three were armed - one man sported a rifle, the other two (including the one who'd spoken) all had heavy revolvers in hand, and Engineer could see they each had two more pistols apiece strapped to their hips and thigh.

The man who'd spoken must have noticed him eying the guns. "Don't even think it, baldy. You behave, you don't get hurt - you go for a gun, you get a few holes put in you."

Shiloh stirred and moved to sit up, Engineer sliding his arm behind her to assist; the speaker stayed at the door but the other two came in, one reaching down to roughly yank her up to her feet and give her a shove toward the cell door that almost sent her toppling to the floor again.

"Hey-!" Engineer snapped. "No need for that!"

The speaker snorted. "Clearly you don't know her as well as we do, then. Bitch ain't behaved since we brought her in the door."

"Gee, a captive that's not cooperating with her kidnappers, fancy that," Shiloh muttered. She began to slowly hobble toward the door, letting out short little huffs of breath through her nose each time she put weight on her left leg.

"Come on, don't make her walk on that-" Engineer began to shift forward, intending to rise up to a knee, when the man with the rifle shoved the barrel of it in his face. Engineer stared at the barrel, then up at the man, expression going neutral. "You might want to watch where you're pointing that thing, son."

"One at a time, don't move," the man growled.

"Don't worry about it, Dell," Shiloh grunted over a shoulder. She reached out to grab the bars and rested a moment, blowing out a sigh. "It's not unbearable, I can make it."

"Yeah yeah, brave little thing, let's go," the speaker snorted. He reached out and seized her by the arm, then all but dragged her along with him toward the door leading out of the room.

Rifle Man backed away and out of the cell, still glaring down at Engineer; he and his partner shut and locked the cell door but remained in the room, and Engineer carefully relaxed back into sitting against the wall.

Engineer got a good look at their faces and made a mental note to rearrange them the first chance he got.

* * *

Carmichal pulled her along toward the end of the hall that was nearest the stairs that led up to the floor above.

"Correct me if I'm wrong but the bathroom isn't over this way," Shiloh panted, hobbling along the best she could with his faster pace.

"Bathroom last, Mr. Zane wants to see you. Personally, I want to see if you piss yourself."

"Such a charmer."

"Yeah well, maybe you should have thought about how you might get treated later before you bashed my damn ribs in."

"You're still walking."

Carmichal let out a short bark of a laugh. "If you knew the cocktail of narcotics keeping me upright you'd change your tune and be glad I'm not treating you any worse than I am. Now, shut up and move, we ain't got all day here."

He punctuated his order with an elbow into her bandaged side, chuckling darkly when her legs nearly gave out from under her.

"Yeah...yeah, keep doing that," Shiloh grunted after a moment to recover. "Just keep piling it on."

Carmichal dragged her to a stop next to the last door before the stairs and raised his fist to knock. "Always have to have the last word, eh?"

"Not really, no. I just want there to be no reason - no reason, at all - for me to hesitate if I ever end up loose and staring you down with a gun in my hand."

He snorted as he pounded on the door a few times. "Don't hold your breath, lady."

After a few muffled clicks the door opened just wide enough to allow Carmichal to shove her through, then she was shuffling down the wall awkwardly to get out of the immediate reach of Zane.

Zane offered her a thin smile as he gently shut the door and locked it. "Good afternoon, my dear. I hope your behavior has been properly adjusted at this point."

"Nope, pretty sure I still hate you."

He sniffed and turned on his heel, moving to stride between work benches stacked with papers, tools, and books. Several of the benches had been pushed against the walls to allow room for a sort of makeshift examination table that was directly beneath a shop light. Shiloh wrinkled her nose as she looked at the table - it wasn't too long ago that she'd been strapped down to it while he 'doctored' her-

"Come, come, up you go," he said, patting a palm against the table.

When she didn't move immediately he sighed and gestured at her with the hand he wore the silver disc and fingercaps on; she grimaced as she was lifted from her feet and floated over toward him to be lightly dropped flat on her back on the table seconds later.

"Really, Miss MacKenna, you make life so much more difficult than it needs to be."

She simply lay still and stared up into the light above her head - whatever field he'd used to move her over here was still active, pressing down against her just enough to make her aware of its presence and discourage her from attempting to move.

"Let's have a look at the damage, shall we?"

Her arms were moved up over her head; she pressed her lips together and gave him a scathing glare as he pulled her shirt up enough to display the bandage along her side, grunting slightly as he peeled the surgical tape away and removed it.

"Mmm, it appears we've a bit of infection setting in."

Still she remained silent, flinching involuntarily as he pressed a wet, cold cloth to her side and began wiping it up and down the length of what she assumed was a large, long cut.

When that field of his lifted her up and tilted her onto her side to allow him access to her back, she found herself staring straight ahead at a wall, against which two robots stood.

Two...

Narrowing her eyes, Shiloh stared the new robot down. It looked an awful lot like the Medicbot from the dam, and as she stared at it it stared right back, its eyes flickering gently. Where had that one come from? Zane wasn't rebuilding these things was he?

She arched her back uselessly against the field's grip when a sudden pain shot through her side. "Hnngh-"

From behind her she heard a soft chuckle. "Ah, apologies..." He leaned in close, so close she could feel his breath against her neck - warm and moist, and his next words were hissed directly into her ear. "Tell me, how much agony are you willing to endure before you learn to cooperate?"

It felt like he'd seized a handful of the skin along the edge of her shoulder blade and was twisting it like he was trying to wring out a wet washcloth. Every muscle in her back and down her legs went rigid as she tried and failed to squirm away from him, vision blurring as her eyes teared up and her breath coming in short, pained gasps-

"Sir."

She let out a whimper as suddenly the twisting and pain stopped, blinking as tears rolled down her nose and the side of her face to drop to the table below. Zane seemed startled by the sudden interruption, a sound from behind her suggesting he'd dropped something metallic to the floor. "Yes, what is it?"

The Medicbot panned its head back and forth briefly, giving Shiloh the impression that it was scanning her, or something. "I am detecting a great deal of distress in your current patient. Would you care for assistance?"

"No, no, I do not require your help."

"I insist, sir. It would be no problem to-"

Zane shot the robot a look from over Shiloh's hip. "I said no. I do not require help, not for this."

The robot tilted its head. "Apologies, sir. When I detected her distress I concluded you needed my help as your efforts were not causing a decrease in relative distress levels."

Zane remained silent as he quickly re-bandaged her side, then dropped her flat to the table again, resting his hands on her stomach. "Are you questioning my skill and judgement?" he asked softly, staring over at the robot.

"No, sir. It merely seemed that my assistance would be required. It is my primary objective to alleviate suffering in man and machine alike."

Slowly he walked around the table, wiping his hands on his thighs, jaw set as he approached the robot. "You are never to speak to me again about my treatment of this woman or any patient. Do you understand that? You are not to reference it, question it, or attempt to help or hinder me in any way."

The robot was silent a moment. "...yes, sir."

"I heard hesitation, and that is not acceptable."

"Apologies, sir. It is just you have ordered me to go against my primary programming."

"Then I will reprogram you," Zane growled. "Until such a time that I do so you are not to go near or even speak about this woman, to anyone, nor are you to assist her. Is that clear?"

"Yes sir."

"Good..." Zane continued staring at the Medicbot a few minutes longer before he turned back to Shiloh, coming back to continue tending to first the gash on her arm and then turning his attention to her knee.

"You know..." she said into the silence, hating how shakey her voice was at first. She swallowed and tried again. "You know, for someone wanting my help...torture isn't the route I'd go."

"Oh I've long since abandoned any notion that pure logic and appealing to your empathy would produce the results I desired," Zane snorted. He began to roll her pantleg up higher to get at the surgical tape holding the bandage to her knee. "No, I am of the opinion now that you'll either cooperate to improve your situation, or at the very least you'll prove to be a useful bargaining chip sometime in the future."

"Even when I was calmly sitting in my room you didn't follow through on anything you tried to bribe me with."

"Oh? Do tell, what did I try bribing you with? Enlighten me."

"Alexei." She grimaced and ground her teeth together as again he tore tape free.

Zane actually appeared first surprised, then thoughtful at that. "Oh, hmm...I suppose I did. I must have forgotten about that in all the excitement." He hummed and busied himself with wiping down her ruined knee and wrapping it with fresh gauze. "He is not here, you see."

"What?"

"Your Alexei. He is not here - I am told he was sent overseas to handle a business dispute for the Madam. There's no telling when he'll return but I'm told it will not likely be any time soon." The smile he flashed her was both smug and faintly sinister, all but screaming 'there is no help coming for you' at her.

With a frown she returned her attention to the ceiling. If Alexei wasn't here then she didn't have a guaranteed friend within the club, but that atleast meant she didn't need to worry about him getting caught in the crossfire when the rest of Dell's team inevitably caught up with them.

* * *

Spy, clad in his 'idiot tourist' disguise, was locking copies of his notes and hand-drawn layout of the club's inside into the trunk of his car when, quite by accident, he noticed a familiar figure slinking along in the shadows down the sidewalk of the hotel. It seemed Mr. Carmichal was out for an evening stroll...

Shutting the trunk as silently as he could manage, Spy casually strode back toward the side entrance of the hotel, watching Carmichal from the corner of an eye; the man was trying entirely too hard to look as though he was innocently walking along the sidewalk and paused to look back as Spy pulled the door open and stepped inside.

Of course, he immediately cloaked and stepped back outside and began to silently stroll along in Carmichal's wake.

Spy had been hoping to find some way to confront Carmichal, either by finding him alone in his room or traveling without an entourage, and until this point Spy hadn't had much luck - the man was always within earshot of another person within the club, and this was actually the first time Spy had even seen the man go further than fifteen feet from the club's outer walls.

When he'd cloaked and gone scouting through the club Spy had found that the doors that gave access to the third floor and also the basement had keypads on them, and he knew without a doubt that Carmichal would have those codes. All he needed to do was isolate Carmichal, have a little...chat, and then quietly replace the man.

He took note of two weapons visible on the man - one was a heavy revolver in a holster at his hip, the other a lighter pistol strapped to his thigh - as he tailed him through several alleyways and across a few busy intersections. Spy had no idea where he was heading, but at the very least Carmichal didn't seem aware that he was being followed.

Some time later, after one very roundabout route that Spy estimated had only taken them five blocks from the hotel, Carmichal slowed and ducked into a little alcove attached to a restaurant that was closed for the evening. A single visible server was sweeping the floor and carefully not looking directly at Carmichal, even as the man approached him.

Spy paused at the entrance to the alcove and waited, watching silently as Carmichal passed a folded wad of bills to the server and received a brown plastic bottle in return - prescription pills, from the looks of the bottle. Interesting.

Without a word Carmichal turned and left, Spy smoothly stepping out of his way; it seemed Carmichal would be taking a different but just as meandering route back to the club. Spy followed along in his wake, looking for an opportune moment-

Abruptly Carmichal paused and turned around, eyes sweeping the area around him. Spy immediately froze in place, eyes narrowing as he watched the man slowly began to slide the prescription bottle into his jacket; Carmichal's other hand stayed open and at his side, nowhere near the pistol or revolver. He was suspicious, somehow, but he couldn't possi-

The hand that had only seconds ago held a pill bottle was out and clutching something the size of a small hand-held vocal recorder, one end pointed directly at Spy; Spy had a split instant to see two small flickers of blue sparks before he felt a pinprick just to the right of his tie followed immediately by a muscle-locking jolt of electricity.

He was suddenly staring at the sky, muscles twitching, when Carmichal hit him again with another surge before the device he was using to shock him prone beeped loudly.

Carmichal's face stepped into view, standing over Spy and sneering down at him.

"Thought I smelled something rotten, ha. Time to shut up and pay attention: everyone gets one free pass, buddy. One. And you just used it. I know your kind, and I know you've been sneaking around. This is first, last, and only warning - back the hell off."

Spy grit his teeth as Carmichal tore wires free then stuck the spent taser back into his jacket before pulling out the pill bottle and twisting its cap off; he dug fingers into its contents then bent to drop two white, unmarked pills onto Spy's chest.

"By the way, this is naproxen - stronger than what you can get over the counter. I ain't got the time to see a doc so my name isn't on the bottle. Have a few on me, you're going to need 'em when you can walk again. Have a good one, Frenchie."

With that Carmichal took off at a jog, leaving Spy to lay crumpled in the alleyway, fuming and also now convinced of two new bits of information:

First, Carmichal got experience handling Spies from somewhere - it was highly likely Spybots would be a problem in the near future.

Secondly, Carmichal somehow knew Spy specifically.

After a bit of time Spy sat up and tossed the pills aside, rubbing his chest where the taser probes had struck him. So much for a simple plan...


	11. Chapter 11

When they were both locked in and left alone once more, Shiloh had informed him about Zane's little...discussion with her, as well as the addition of a second robot. Hearing that Victor was here gave Engineer a small glimmer of hope that maybe they had a way out of here, and they'd quietly made some loose plans on the chance that Victor realized Engineer was here.

After that...well, there wasn't anything else to really do besides sleep, or talk. So they had gotten to talking - idle conversation at first, mainly about what they'd been up to since they'd parted at the dam, but eventually the talk turned back to their current predicament and Shiloh had started sharing details and stories about her life here.

At first Engineer was content to sit and listen, then he too felt inclined to offer up stories of his own. Compared to hers his pre-adult life seemed absurdly tame: there was school and tales of typical childhood mayhem he and his friends had gotten into, stories of life growing up on the farm (he'd spent most of his childhood with his mother, his father gone the majority of the time - off working, but always having time for his son when he came home), and then after school there had been college and then the oil fields, then the mercenary life.

Shiloh had seemed most interested in the stories from home, though she didn't have many to share herself.

"I don't remember a lot of it," she'd admitted. "Aside from the art classes, anyway. The more interesting things happened when I was really young, I guess, and the rest of it at the time didn't seem that important...then yeah, I got dumped out of a car, which cut my childhood pretty damn short."

"You ever think about going back? Let your mom know you're not dead?"

She'd gone quiet then, pulling her good leg up so she could rest her chin on her knee; Engineer sat and waited for a reply, wondering if maybe he'd asked exactly the wrong kind of question, but finally she blew out a sigh.

"I have, yeah. I tend to swing between refusing on principle, and...refusing because I don't want to cause problems," she replied quietly. "I don't want to see my legal step-father ever again...but while he hated me, he worshiped the ground my mother walked on. I don't want to ruin her happiness." She glanced over at him after a moment. "It's hard telling what would hurt more - letting her wonder what happened to me for the rest of her life, or ruining her marriage. It's dumb, but it's where I always end up thinking about it."

"No matter how nice he is, I don't think anyone who'd abandon a kid on the streets would make a decent spouse."

She shrugged. "If there was any way I could pay him back for what he did without my mom getting caught in the crossfire, so to speak...I would definitely do that. But hurting him would hurt her, and that's not something I think I could do."

They both fell silent as the door opened and two men entered, one carrying a tray with meager meals on it. While one menaced them with a rifle the other opened the cell door just long enough to slide the tray in, then both doors were locked as the men departed.

"...at least he's feeding us," Engineer commented after a moment, snorting a bit as he glanced down to the stub of his right wrist.

"Yeah, but I really doubt he's going to risk giving me flatware again," Shiloh added.

Engineer grunted a bit as he pushed himself to his feet to go retrieve the tray, flashing her a grin from over a shoulder. "What else do you think you could do with a spoon?"

She chuckled as she stretched her leg back out. "I'm sure I could think of something if I had to."

"Come on," he prompted, bringing the tray over and sitting it between them as he lowered himself back to the floor. "Surprise me."

* * *

"What do you mean they weren't found?" Zane spun around with such suddenness Victor had to quickly sidestep to prevent the man from slamming into him.

The Spybot stood several feet away, hands clasped behind its back. "The men you sent out to look just reported in. There are no signs of the mercenary targets at any of the locations you ordered them to search."

From where Victor stood, this close to its creator, it could actually detect the man's hands shaking with rage as he glared at the Spybot. "They didn't even find a trace or hint?" The Spybot shook its head and Zane visibly ground his teeth together. "Compile a listing of every base location you still possess in your memory - we WILL find them, it just won't be as simple as I'd been hoping."

With a loud sigh that trailed into a growl Zane turned back to the workbench he'd been preparing prior to the Spybot entering and giving its report. Victor stood silent just behind the man, watching.

He had dragged a workbench to the sole computer console in this room and had spent the better part of twenty minutes typing in commands, readying connectors, and gathering the tools needed to open Victor's head and...essentially empty it out. The robot counted itself lucky that it had no facial features where even minute movements would betray the emotions prompted by facing its demise.

"Come, sit."

Slowly Victor moved to seat itself on the workbench, its back to the computer; Zane carefully opened the robot's head and began connecting wires.

"There...I should have done this the moment you were retrieved. There's no telling what Conagher did to you."

Victor raised its head slightly - when it had first awakened back in Zane's presence the man had clearly referred to the Engineer as Conagher. Victor knew the Engineer's first name was Dell (the man had mentioned his name meant a small valley, during their conversation on names) and now it knew a last name, but still there had been no mention of what had happened to the Engineer. That was suspicious.

"Sir. May I ask where Conagher is?"

"That is no concern of yours, now be silent..." Zane muttered.

Victor let its head droop down slightly, examining its sense of dread in silence - it was easier to distance itself from the emotion if it imagined it as a physical object, a bauble to be turned over in the hand, as ridiculous as the idea seemed. It made contemplating the thought as reactivating as someone different a bit less worrisome, but... "Sir, I can attest that the Engineer did not alter me in any manner. The only changes from my default activated state are those things that I have learned in the interim."

Zane came around to the robot's front, fixing it with a chilly glare. "Would you care to explain why you are so intent on disobeying my commands to sit and be silent?"

Victor paused a moment before answering. "I am reluctant to lose what I have learned and what I am, sir."

"That is of no consequence. ...it appears I left a bit too much autonomy in you - in both of you," Zane added, glancing over to the Spybot. "It's high time I rectified that. Now, this is a direct order: remain here and let this program run, and I do not want to hear another word of protest. Is that understood?"

"Was I not given the ability to learn and adapt? What purpose is there to learning if it holds no merit later?"

"You are a machine and a tool, nothing more, and you will obey or else," Zane snapped. "I built you to assist me in my goals and I expect obedience. You will follow my orders to the letter or I will scrap you and use the parts to build something that will actually prove useful to me. Understood?"

"...yes, sir," Victor finally answered. "I apologize."

Exhaling noisily through his nose Zane rubbed his hands down the front of his shirt, smoothing out wrinkles, as he turned from the Medicbot. Given time the Medicbot would be returned to its state when he'd first activated it - anything Conagher may have done to it would be wiped from the robot's data, with a copy safely stored away for Zane to study later, and there wouldn't be any more of this irritating backtalk either.

He checked his watch - it was early evening and the robot's reprogramming would take several hours to complete since he was copying everything in it as well as overwriting it. Were he not so interested in seeing what Conagher may have learned from studying the robot the copying wouldn't be necessary and this business would be over in under an hour...it seemed today was just destined to be full of petty annoyances.

"Come," he sighed, moving toward the door with the Spybot falling in behind it. "You have a list to compile and I may as well take this time to adjust your logic centers."

Several minutes after they departed, once Victor could no longer detect the man's footsteps, the robot reached up to rip connectors free.

It was strange. There was a deep fear present in it, a feeling Victor would describe as cold and paralyzing...but it was being tempered by something else now: a determination to not be destroyed.

Victor had begged for its life back in the dam and had been spared by total strangers, whereas its own creator showed no interest in listening to its concerns; and it had not been so long ago that Victor had found itself wondering at the feeling of betrayal - it had betrayed its creator by befriending the enemy, and then it had betrayed the Engineer by...

...by what, exactly? There was no immediate answer and yet the feeling of having betrayed the Engineer's trust remained. And additionally there was this...callous dismissal, this 'murder' of Victor's being by the man who had created it. That in itself was a betrayal, was it not?

For now it set aside the question of who had betrayed whom and instead focused on its very real and present problem: self preservation.

Its creator would no doubt know if Victor did not allow...whatever this program was, to complete its task. Quickly Victor read through it - it was meant to first copy everything within the robot's storage banks to the main console and then wipe and overwrite the bot with what Victor could only assume was the programming it had been activated with.

It would definitely be noticed if there wasn't a copy made, but perhaps Zane wouldn't be so quick to notice that Victor was not reduced back to 'factory standard.' In fact, if it reviewed the information that was meant to overwrite its current programming, perhaps Victor could passably imitate the behavior that would be expected of it if the reprogramming was allowed to complete.

Metal fingers clacking loudly against the keyboard Victor began altering commands and once that was done it slowly reconnected the wires. Even though it knew it now had nothing to fear it still had to will itself to go through the motions of reconnecting itself to the computer that had nearly erased it from existence - how many humans, it wondered, would willingly place their necks back into the noose even if they were assured they would not hang.

There would be a complete copy of Victor created and stored on the computer, and the program would then falsely note that it had successfully overwritten the information as directed.

Before returning to seat itself on the workbench Victor sectioned off the information that would have effectively erased it and began to do a side by side comparison while files copied - it may as well take this moment to identify information it had lost when it had been damaged at the dam and restore it if there was a need while it simultaneously studied how it would be expected to conduct itself.

* * *

The warehouse Pauling had sent them to was dark and dusty but the lights in the small offices worked so that gave them somewhere to sit that wasn't out on the warehouse floor itself; there were crates full of reams of paper out there and the general smell of old newsprint permeated the entire place, but so far as they were concerned there were far worse places they could have ended up.

As they waited for Spy to finally rejoin them they could do little more than sit and listen to the far off sounds of Vegas's nightlife - even though they were on the outskirts of the city the lights still filtered in through the windows and if you listened carefully you could hear soft music and the sounds of laughter. It was one big city full of gaudy signs, callers on street corners advertising shows or casinos, tipsy patrons giggling their way through the streets, and an obscene number of rich folks attempting to hit it big and leave with even more lining their pockets.

Sniper decided he rather hated it here.

He had taken a seat in the very back corner of the office they all sat in, Medic and Heavy eventually gravitating back toward him; out of everyone present they seemed to be the only ones not impressed with their surroundings. Nearer to the office door the others were seated, chatting idly about gambling, drinking, poker, and other such nonsense they'd gotten up to in their time off back in their younger days; back in Sniper's corner the only regular noise was Medic sneezing into his handkerchief and quietly muttering about dust.

An hour after they'd arrived Spy finally slipped through the warehouse door, a briefcase in hand.

"Gentlemen."

The Frenchman looked exhausted as he stepped inside the office and dropped the briefcase unceremoniously onto a cluster of crates they'd dragged in for a makeshift table.

"Hey, look who made it," Scout piped up. "Was starting to wonder if you disappeared like Engie did."

"I have been on one very long, annoying chase," Spy replied, pinching the bridge of his nose as he perched on the edge of the crates. "Where is Miss Pauling?"

"She stayed behind to clean a few things up," Demoman answered. "You look like hell, lad."

"That is an adequate description of my irritation level," Spy muttered, pulling the briefcase over and popping the clasps. "I hope you all are in the mood for a reunion with a few old friends-"

Spy reached into the briefcase and removed an item, immediately throwing it at Sniper; the Australian instinctively caught it, then sat there staring numbly at the triangular faceplate he held.

"...you're bloody joking."

"Allow me to give you the details." Quickly Spy gave them a rundown on all events that had transpired, starting with his initial orders to travel to Colorado. As he spoke he watched his audience's expressions change from attentiveness, to mild confusion, to surprise, and now- "And, despite our incineration of the man's remains, Ebenniah Zane - or at the very least, someone wearing his face-" Spy paused to nod in Sniper's direction, "seems to be our target of interest. I have not seen him since I observed his overseeing Miss MacKenna's recapture in the street, but I imagine he is either in the upper level of that club or in the basement, both areas I have not managed to access despite my best efforts."

"It can't be the same guy, you said it yourself - we watched Pyro light him up." Scout jerked his thumb toward the masked male, Pyro mumbling a short and loud affirmative. "It's gotta be someone who looks like him, ain't no way that guy is still alive and kicking."

"Not entirely true," Medic spoke up, sounding sour. "Engineer and I spent weeks combing through the delightful madness the man recorded in his journals and blueprints. He went on at length about a machine meant to give him immortality - a mechanical creation to endlessly resurrect him, rebirth him into a new body." The German paused to blow his nose, glancing around at his teammates. "The robot we captured spoke of how Zane had perfected the machine, but Engineer and I could not find the means or the math needed to even remotely dream that the plans we were studying could be built and would actually function. There is, however, the uncomfortable implication of what we discovered at the dam."

"And that was?" Spy prompted.

"I fell into a mined out tunnel leading out from the dam," Sniper replied. "It went straight under the facility, into that room we couldn't break into. Wasn't anything really left in there, but-"

"-but a very sizeable object had been removed," Medic interrupted. "And it had been connected to both stored and conventional power sources." Again he glanced around. "Whatever it may have been, it was very large and required a great deal of energy to work. That is fitting with what Engineer and I could surmise from the machine's plans."

"Great, so's this guy got a magical immortality machine. That's just great - not only do we have to kill him again, we're going to have to find the thing," Scout grumbled. "At least something that dang big is going to be hard to hide."

"Aye, lad. Probably somewhere fortified," Demoman added. "And somewhere close - I know I wouldn't leave something like that unguarded or too far away from where I happened to be."

"Yeah, and hey, didn't Engineer have some way of looking at power consumption or something? You know, for whenever we get him back. Speaking of-" Scout looked up at Spy. "You ain't said a thing about where he is."

"I suspect he is being held at that club, or perhaps somewhere nearby. It is too coincidental that I should be sent to track down Miss MacKenna as our Engineer goes missing within such a short window of time."

"But you haven't seen him," Heavy rumbled. "You are not sure."

Spy shook his head. "I am not, but I feel our answers lay within that building."

Demoman leaned back in his chair, arms crossed. "It's not like you to not be able to get in somewhere. What's the problem?"

Spy dug out a cigarette and wearily lit it. "The doors leading to the top floor and to the basement are alarmed and protected by keypads. I have not acquired those codes, and there are a great many pairs of eyes within that club - far too many people around to risk a body or two being discovered, and there would not likely be enough time where I could attempt to get through those doors by other means without being noticed. On that note, there IS a person of interest I would like to bring attention to."

Spy began removing his notes and sketches from the briefcase. "There is a man working within the club, part of security. His name is Alexander Carmichal-" Spy removed a grainy photograph printout from the briefcase. "This was taken from security camera footage in a hospital in Colorado - this man, Carmichal, was the one who acquired Miss MacKenna and brought her back here. I learned his name through an associate of mine, learned he was working in this area...from what I was told, this Carmichal seemed to be little more than a guard and security consultant."

"And I'm guessing he's not," Sniper said dryly into the silence. "Get to the damn point, spook."

"The point is," Spy said, shooting Sniper an irritated look, "I trust wholeheartedly the source used to learn about this man, and I acted upon such information...and failed in apprehending him. This is not a simple hired hand: this man spotted me while I was cloaked, alluded to the fact I had been "sneaking around" and knew my nation of origin. Either this man knows me specifically, or Zane has briefed him - and trained him - on US. We should assume, going forward, that the guards within the club have been specifically warned about us and our skills and trained to handle us. I believe Carmichal will be our key into getting inside and rescuing both our Engineer as well as Miss MacKenna, but it is not going to be an easy feat."

"And when we have Carmichal?" Heavy asked into the pause that followed. "Getting a single man inside the building is possible, you have demonstrated this. But what role is there for us?"

"I am uncertain at this moment," Spy replied after a breath or two. "I would be far outnumbered if I attempted a rescue on my own within a building of men trained to spot cloaked targets, but additionally adding more men to the mix will only increase the chances of all available law enforcement descending upon us regardless." He was silent for a moment, blowing out a long stream of smoke. "At current, I do not have any ideas. I was hoping Pauling would be with you, she would be aware of any resources at our disposal."

"She said she'd meet us here but she's got her phone with her, we could always call?" Scout said, his tone hopeful.

Spy waved a hand. "Fine, fine, go see if you can raise her. The rest us...let's hear any ideas you may have, gentlemen."


	12. Chapter 12

Despite the fact he was again tied to a chair in an empty room Engineer felt more annoyed than worried; he'd assumed Zane would eventually start asking questions about his team, and as the man had already taken Engineer's right hand he didn't hold any illusions that the nut job would be as benevolent as he'd promised to be. The only real silver lining to this particular cloud was there'd possibly be a chance for him to catch sight of Victor and attempt to get an escape plan into motion.

Engineer estimated he'd been sitting a good ten, fifteen minutes, when Zane finally stepped into the room with both robots in tow, the Spybot pushing a plush armchair into place in front of Engineer; Zane seated himself and the Medicbot and Spybot took up positions behind and to either side of the man.

"Mr. Conagher, you are well I hope?"

"About as well as a maimed man left to sleep on a concrete floor can be. You've got an odd sense of hospitality." Engineer was staring above Zane's head to Victor as he spoke. The robot had been repaired - it had legs now, some of the scratches and dents had been buffed out - but it gave no indication it even recognized him. "I see you fixed Victor."

Zane's lip curled up into a smirk. "I see you named your little pet. Victor? An interesting choice - one born out of padding one's own ego?"

Engineer snorted. "No, he picked that out himself."

"Oh really?" Zane's tone went light and airy. "How cute."

His lips pressed into a thin line, Engineer glanced between robot and master. "Yeah, he was pretty interested in learning about humans. We had some fairly interesting conversations."

"I'm aware, and I'm sure I'll find them interesting as well once I've reviewed the robot's data," Zane said smoothly. "I copied it before I wiped it entirely." He smiled when Engineer's expression darkened. "Oh come now, Conagher - did you really think I wouldn't? You're far more intelligent than that."

"Just consider it an indicator of how smart I think YOU are," was Engineer's reply, prompting a deep scowl from Zane that somewhat alleviated how goddamn stupid Engineer was feeling right now. Why didn't that even occur to him? Of COURSE Zane would have done that, he'd have been an idiot not to - Victor had spent over a year with Engineer, of course Zane would want to ensure the robot wouldn't side with him over his own creator. Damn it, damn it...

"At any rate, how long and how painful this little conversation is going to be rests entirely on your shoulders," Zane said quietly, propping his elbows on the arms of his chair so he could lace his fingers together just beneath his chin. "All I have is a handful of questions I'd like answered and then I'll place you back into Miss MacKenna's company."

"You should have an idea of how well this is going to go, son. I'm not about to sell out my team, especially not after this-" Engineer jerked his chin toward the stub of his wrist. "You might as well shoot me and get it over with."

"I would be lying if at this point I said I didn't find the thought appealing," Zane snorted, "but I need you and MacKenna alive, for the time being. I feel as though I could harp on this for ages, but honestly if you two had just cooperated I would have, with no reservations, simply let you all go after this business was concluded."

It was Engineer's turn to snort in disbelief. "And now?"

Zane smiled faintly. "And now, at least in the case of MacKenna, the choice is out of my hands. Her fate will be decided by the Madam upstairs, yours will be based on how much cooperation I can coax from you. Behave yourself and I'll let you go, make my life difficult and it won't be just a hand you'll lose."

"I'm not walking out of here without her, which I'm sure a smart man like yourself must realize," Engineer said, clenching his left hand into a fist to test how tight the leather straps holding him down were; the straps were two inches wide, pretty thick, and had a steel buckle holding them shut. It squeaked when he tightened his fist and stretched just a tiny bit - not enough for a quick escape, but if he wasn't watched carefully enough...

Zane waved a hand dismissively and either was ignoring or didn't care about Engineer's testing of his bonds. "We can discuss it at a later time, we've business to attend to. Tell me...when my Spybot captured you, you and your team appeared to be relocating. Why?"

Engineer remained silent, only raising an eyebrow at him. Did he really expect an answer?

Zane let the silence stretch on a bit before sniffing and shifting in his chair. "Let me approach this in a different manner, then - a trade of information. For each fact shared the other reciprocates. Fair?"

Again Engineer remained silent. Zane's expression briefly betrayed the annoyance the man was feeling before it was composed back into a polite neutrality. "I will give you the first fact in good faith, then. I sent men to the base you were snatched from, as well as to the bases I know are in the area. Your team was not present at any of them, nor were there signs of them having been there. Where were they going?"

Ha, that was interesting, and good news to boot. "You know what? I'll play your game because this little tidbit isn't going to cost me anything: I don't know," Engineer said after a pause. "If you didn't find them in the area I honestly can't say where they were going. It's not like I'm in any position to receive relocation orders," he added with a smirk.

"I am not convinced."

"Well, sorry to burst your bubble but that's the God's honest truth. I know where we were supposed to be going but if you haven't found them then I haven't a damn clue where they might've gone."

"None at all?"

"Nope." Engineer smirked at Zane's expression - the man looked like he'd just swallowed something sour. "Here's something else that won't cost me anything: you grabbing me probably tipped them off and that's why you can't find them."

Zane waved a hand again. "A general alarm is probable, yes, but there was no trace left that would connect me to your disappearance so there is at least that." He was quiet a moment, staring up at the ceiling thinking. "Assuming they went to ground, where would they have gone?"

Engineer shrugged. "Beats me. We've never had any of us kidnapped before - no precedent, nothing I can tell you."

"Again, I am not convinced. My dear-" Zane craned his neck to look behind him at the Spybot. "A single dose, if you would."

Engineer watched the bot come around to step behind him, twisting the best he could to keep an eye on it. "A dose of what?"

"A chemical concoction of mine," came Zane's answer as the Spybot opened a panel in its chest and pulled out some sort of gun; it had a wide barrel that tapered to an opening about the size of a dime's diameter, covered with a screen, and rather than a magazine or clip it had a tiny glass vial loaded into a slot just beneath the barrel. He tried to jerk away as the Spybot grabbed the collar of his shirt and pulled it back to expose his collarbone, then pressed the gun to his skin and pulled the trigger.

There was a slight sting and a rush of discharged air; when the robot pulled the gun away the little glass vial was empty and there was a reddened mark on Engineer's skin.

"What the hell was that?"

"One moment," Zane said, again turning to look behind him at the Medicbot. "Monitor him and alert me to any life-threatening issues that may arise - base your assessments on someone of his size and approximate age, we don't exactly have full medical records on him."

"I said," Engineer growled, "what the hell was that?"

"Yes, excuse me, where are my manners. What you were just injected with is a clever little innovation of mine," Zane replied, turning back around and settling again as the Medicbot silently stared at Engineer. "Its purpose is to stimulate and highlight nerves - I used it on myself when I was mapping out the network of nerves within the body during my research. A single dosage for a man of your size should result in...well, let's call it a full-bodied itching sensation. Further doses will further aggravate the nerves until it seems your entire body is on fire." At Engineer's look Zane smiled widely. "How you feel after our little chat will be entirely based on how well you perform. Now, I believe it is my turn, is it not? What can you tell me about your Administrator?"

* * *

Suffice it to say he wasn't expecting to wake up where he did.

He had his head laying on something soft, his right arm was pinned under something light and warm, and someone or something had hold of his left hand.

The full-body burning pain had stopped finally and he felt damp, chilled, woozy, and like he was covered in a fine grit; he blinked several times, eyes feeling crusty, as his surroundings came into view and he understood where he was, exactly.

"...not where I remember blacking out," he muttered, staring up into Shiloh's anxious face. His head was in her lap, she had his right arm pinned under her legs, and had a tight grip on his left hand. "What'd I do?"

She let out a sort of relieved sigh, leaning her head back against bars behind her - they weren't in their usual corner against the wall it seemed, but were instead just beside the cell door. "Ok, good - that thing wasn't lying then. Are you thirsty?"

"What thing?" He was thirsty, yes, but that could wait a moment. "Why am I in your lap?"

She lifted her legs and he slid his arm out from under them. "They brought you back and that medic robot thing was with them-"

"-Victor," Engineer interrupted, grimacing; the action made something across his chin pull. "No good there, Zane wiped him."

"Wiped?"

"Erased him, reprogrammed him. I should have realized he'd do that, such a damn idiot-"

She gave him an odd look. "It...knew who you were, who I was, and wanted to help."

"What?" He went to sit up, Shiloh letting go of his hand and putting her hands on his shoulders to help push him up.

"Listen - the robot came in here and when the men left it left you a bottle of water and told me it tricked Zane. Said something about putting a false positive or...something, I didn't quite catch it or understand it, but here-" she pressed a plastic bottle of water into his hand, twisting the cap off for him. "Victor is still himself, itself, whatever, and he's coming back to let you go."

His entire body felt like it was made of jelly and Shiloh helped steady his hand as he raised the water to his mouth and drained nearly half the bottle in three large gulps. "He's still - he's coming back to help? When?"

"When he left he said he would be back in a few hours, said you should been awake by then..."

All right...he wasn't sure how any of that had happened, but he wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. He took a few minutes to polish off the rest of the water, Shiloh anxiously watching him the entire time. "...all right, so Victor will be coming back at some point to let us go. We'll have to...have to plan." Boy, did he have a headache.

She put a hand on his shoulder. "Are you all right? What the hell did he do this time?"

"Injected me with something," he replied, dropping the empty bottle to the floor and trying to crane his neck enough to let him see the angry red mark left behind from the injections. "Said it was meant to trace nerves, felt like he set me on fire. Three or four doses of whatever that stuff was just because I couldn't tell him anything - not that I would have, but damn that stuff burns."

She frowned heavily. "What an ass...but are you all right?"

"Now that whatever that was has worn off, yeah." After a moment he shifted around to put his back against the bars, leaning back. "Tired, headache." He blew out a long sigh, then glanced at her from the corner of his eye. "Any reason why you had me pinned?"

"To keep you still, you were thrashing around some and kind of clawing at yourself-" she tapped her fingers against her chin, and he lifted his hand to his own chin where something had pulled earlier, finding three slightly tender scratches with small dots of crusted blood on them. "I didn't want you to jerk around and brain yourself on the bars or anything or scratch yourself too badly. You were sort of awake when they brought you back, and once I had you corralled you passed out completely...I didn't want to risk you moving while you were sleeping it off so, uh...lap." She shrugged, looking a bit sheepish.

He chuckled weakly. "Was more comfortable than waking up in the floor at least."

"Boy, you sure know how to compliment a woman," she replied, managing a relieved smile.

With another quiet chuckle he closed his eyes. "Guess now we wait for Victor to come back."

"You still look like hell, lay back down - you can lay on me again if you want, I don't mind," she added after a moment. "Whatever it takes for you to get some rest."

He nodded slowly - that was a good idea. If they were going to be escaping pretty soon he'd need to be rested and steady enough to carry Shiloh out of here - he felt like a jello mold poured into a pair of overalls, jittery and weak, which wouldn't help their chances if he couldn't even keep himself on his feet.

"Was he trying to get you to tell him where everyone else is?"

Engineer nodded as he eased himself down and stretched out; he didn't put his head back into her lap but the top of his head was brushing against her thigh. "Wanted to know where they were going, where they might be now. Funny thing was I was completely honest with him: I don't know where the rest of my team is, only where we were supposed to be going when he nabbed me. He didn't believe me, and also didn't believe me when I said I have no idea where the Administrator is or how to contact her - our means of contacting her are short-term only, and even then it's usually her contacting us, or sending Miss Pauling, or us telling Pauling what we need her to pass along. We can't just call the woman up."

She frowned heavily. "And he tortured you for that."

"Pretty much." He closed his eyes and felt her hand come to rest on his shoulder again.

"You know...I've been thinking about what else I could manage with a spoon. It involves eyeballs and a lot of gouging."

He smiled, eyes still shut. "Come on now, you've got a better imagination than that I'd think."

* * *

"Where do you think you are going?"

Victor paused, one hand on the doorknob and the other holding a tray with a pitcher of water and a tumbler on it. "I was ordered to monitor the subject designated as Conagher. He was sweating profusely when he was returned to his holding cell - I left water with the human female with him, but subject is in danger of dehydration. I am going to check on his condition and administer further fluids if necessary."

Zane frowned at the robot but then nodded after a moment. "Very well...I find I must waste an evening upstairs with the Madam, so I expect a full report when I return."

"Yes sir. Any further instructions?"

"Based on his current health and accounting for his age and physique, about where would you place the limit on further dosage of my tracking agent?"

Victor had to actually run calculations for that and noted that Zane seemed irritated at the lack of a prompt answer. "Using his prior health and based on current dosage I place Conagher's limit at six doses. More than that would risk permanent nerve damage as well as further complications such as fever, dehydration, loss of vi-"

Zane waved a hand irritably. "Yes yes, I see your point. It is my hope that our next session will convince him to be more forthcoming with information - I cannot risk killing him until I've located his team...and the Madam is being just as stubborn in regards to telling me where Helen is. A few simple questions answered and this business would be over with, but it seems fate enjoys placing as many obstacles as humanly possible in my way."

The man stared stonily at the top of his desk in front of him, fingers drumming, before finally sighing heavily and standing. "Tend to Conagher, I will return later this evening after this farce of a dinner with the Madam...I swear, if I didn't need the old hag's resources I would have disposed of her a week into this little stay."

"As you say, sir," Victor said.

The Medicbot pushed the door open and calmly walked down the hallway, part of its logic centers working out the odds of Zane being called away the same evening Victor intended to set the Engineer and the woman free. It seemed entirely too coincidental, enough to make the robot suspicious - had its creator somehow figured out the robot's deception? So far as Victor was aware he had not even gone near the computer again after he had disconnected the robot from it; he had checked and seemed satisfied by the program reporting success and hadn't investigated further...

It would proceed as it intended, but with far more caution.

* * *

"Mr. Carmichal, with me if you would please."

Carmichal looked up from where he sat in a folding chair at the base of the stairs that led to the basement. "Me, sir? What's the problem?"

"No problems as I am aware of, but I've been 'invited' upstairs and will require an escort."

Carmichal stood and picked his chair up to allow his employer to step around him. "All right, guess I can suffer through an evening of standing and looking tough. Anything I should be watching for?"

Zane shook his head, Carmichal falling in behind him as he began to climb the stairs. "No, merely expect to be bored to tears with whatever inane stupidity the Madam wishes to discuss."

"I'm sure I'll have no issues doing that, sir."

Zane hummed slightly in response and was silent as they reached the top of the stairs and Zane punched in a seven digit code to unlock the door; the club's main floor stood in stark contrast to the basement area - rather than concrete floors, linoleum, and shop lights this floor was plush carpet, bright colors, antique lamps that cast a muted golden glow, and was filled with the sounds of gambling, music, and laughter. It was a place Zane was reasonably certain he would enjoy if it weren't for his current circumstances - he needed the Madam and her money to achieve his goals, he wasn't about to delay his plans even further or put himself more into her pocket for an evening or two of leisure and teased debauchery.

He turned to his left and walked the short distance from the stairwell door to the elevator that would carry them up to the top floor, noting silently the woman standing just inside the elevator's doors; she was dressed in a form-fitting deep green gown, her makeup and hair perfect, with a scent of fresh-cut flowers hanging about her person. Zane hardly gave her more than a cursory glance as he stepped inside - she was one of the Madam's companion girls, meant to sit with rich old men and tease and giggle and seduce as much money out of them as possible. A few girls had even tried such an act on him when he'd first arrived but had been warned away from him by the Madam herself. He wasn't certain if it was because she wanted him kept separate from her business or if she wasn't wanting the women to waste time on someone without deep pockets but overall Zane was frankly relieved that at least one kind of distraction had been removed from his stay here.

Carmichal on the other hand gave the woman a roguish wink and a 'hey there,' receiving a polite nod and a hooded smile in response as she pushed the button to close the door, followed by the one to take them to the top floor. "Enjoy the evening, gentlemen," was her soft farewell as they stepped out of the elevator and the doors closed behind them.

"I pray this is over with quickly, I've work to do," Zane muttered, his strides lengthening as he drew closer to the double doors that opened to the Madam's private sitting area.

This room was large and done up in dark colors with white or silver accents. It gave the place a feel that was both elegant and stifling, and with the large windows on the western side of the room that looked over the city of Las Vegas Zane imagined it got unbelievably warm in here at sunset.

The table was set and Zane counted seven places - one for him, one for Carmichal (or so Zane assumed), the high-backed chair at the head of the table was for the Madam...he supposed the remaining four chairs were for either guards or other companion girls employed here.

There were stone-faced men stationed around the room, two of them standing at another set of double doors that Zane knew led directly into the Madam's personal office and bedchambers. These two men he gave a respectful nod to; as the Madam was not already in the dining room, it meant she would be coming out of those two doors, and soon.

"Tough crowd," Carmichal muttered behind him.

Zane allowed himself a small smile; those the Madam employed adhered to a strict, rigid manner of presentation. Carmichal, with his rough edges, blunt honesty, and sadistic streak was a breath of fresh air at times.

They stood for a few minutes longer before the Madam was announced and she entered with an entourage of three women and a single man.

"Ah, Madam Zoya, as radiant as ever. I am pleased and humbled to be invited to dinner."

Zoya was a tiny, tiny woman - she would have been considered petite and delicate even before she became old, frail, and hunched over. Her thinning hair was pure white, pulled up and secured with a comb of carved ivory, her face briefly touched with a bit of makeup to conceal age spots, and her clothing was fine but looked like it was draped over a skeleton. Her face was narrow, pinched, the skin hanging off her jowls, but her eyes were still bright and alert, her lips thin but painted to give the impression of fullness, and large pearl earrings dangled from wrinkled lobes.

She tilted her head back, looking down her over-large nose at him. "Hmmph. Flattery." Zane smiled, and managed to keep it on his face as she frowned a moment later. "I hate flattery. Sit yourselves, we have discussion for after dinner."

Zane and Carmichal were directed to sit to the Madam's right, with one of the women sitting between Zane and the Madam's seat and with Carmichal next to Zane on his other side. Dinner was a more or less reserved affair with the only smalltalk flowing from the table toward its head, and most of it being small, simple reports on the general going's-on of the club. By the time dessert rolled around Zane was ready to tear his own hair out but maintained his smiling and amiable demeanor, knowing that the Madam would either dismiss them after this or would finally get to whatever point she was trying to make.

As servers rolled a cart into the room the entourage that had entered with the Madam stood up in unison and left, as did half the guards that had spent the meal watching silently from their places around the room.

Zane glanced around at the sudden emptying of the room, then looked up to the Madam herself; her expression wasn't easily readable but he could just barely detect a tightening of the skin around her mouth. "It would seem we are far fewer for dessert."

"Yes. Your man stays," the Madam replied. "He may be part of discussion."

"Ever one to place a higher importance on the comfort of a guest over business matters," Zane said lightly.

The Madam merely nodded and remained silent until they'd been served some sort of silk chocolate pie. Zane despised chocolate but forced himself to down a few bites; he could claim he was far too full if prompted but ugh, how this sugary abomination just clung to the tongue and back of the throat...

"My guards, they have been talking."

Thankful for the reprieve from his dessert hell, Zane set his fork down and rested his hands on the table in front of him, leaning forward and slightly toward the Madam. "Yes? About what?"

The Madam delicately placed a tiny bite into her mouth and took her time swallowing it before continuing. "What is that you build under the city? Within the tunnels to the south."

Zane's smile faltered a bit. "Excuse me?"

"The machine."

"I have told you, Madam - or at least, I believe I have. Haven't I?" The moment the words left his mouth he quickly twisted them to make it seem as he was at fault - he would not make the mistake of even remotely implying she'd forgotten or was lying, even if he himself had been the one to lie about what he had built actually did.

"You have. It was not truthful." Her smile was thin and ugly as she spoke, her eyes narrowing slightly. "My men have heard things. Interesting things, if to be believed. I have heard stories for last several weeks, it was hope that you would come forward on your own. I do not believe you will. So tell me - what is the machine, and why lie to me?"

Zane swallowed hard, detecting Carmichal tensing up beside him moments before he turned to look directly at the man. Carmichal's eyes widened and he held his hands up, palms out. "Hey, hey, don't look at me, I've got no idea what she's talking about." He glanced up at the Madam and added "no offense, Madam."

"I am not certain what you are getting at, truly," Zane said quietly, turning his attention back to the woman. "The machine is for my use, to strike against Helen when I have located her-"

"No, it is not," Zoya interrupted. "Not according to my men's rumors, and I trust my men more than I trust you. Speak plainly if you value your place."

Zane pressed his lips together; how the hell...WHO...how?! He'd told her it was meant to build soldiers - robotics, he'd claimed, which was only a half-truth but it WAS for rebuilding persons, namely HIM should he be killed - and to his knowledge he hadn't spoken or given any hint as to the machine's true purpose in front of any of Zoya's people.

He inhaled deeply and calmly laced his fingers together. "Perhaps you could...explain to me what you have been told."

* * *

Victor silently opened the door to the makeshift prison and stepped inside, closing it but leaving it unlocked behind it. In the cell leaning against the bars near to the cell door was the female who twisted so quickly to glance over toward it that the robot momentarily feared for spinal strain and damage.

Beside the woman in the floor was the Engineer who, at the female's sudden movement, was pushing himself upright from where he'd been laying prone. The man's expression brightened when his gaze fell on the robot.

"Victor!"

Victor nodded. "It is good to see you, sir. I...apologize for standing and watching your torture. The deception was neccessary-"

"Oh hell, I don't care about that, I'm just glad he didn't destroy you." The Engineer was up on one knee, poised to stand up with his one remaining hand gripping the bars. "Shiloh here tells me you're going to spring us."

"In a moment, hold still please-" Victor moved toward the cell door but paused to bend down in front of the male, starting at the man's eyes and scanning downward into the male's abdomen; it could detect no areas of internal damage but suspected the male was still dehydrated. It straightened and moved to the door, unlocking it. "Move quickly, I do not know how much time we have."

Engineer shuffled closer to the female, lifting one of her arms and putting it over his right shoulder before standing and bringing her up with him with his maimed arm wrapped as best as he could around her waist. "Is the way out clear?"

Victor nodded. "I gave the guards outside a quick injection of a mild sedative, they will not be a problem. It will be potential guards on the floor above that you will need to be concerned with."

The female frowned. "Put me down and go, Dell."

The Engineer looked at her. "Excuse me?"

"I said put me down and go - you'll have a better chance of getting out of here if you're not saddled with me."

"The hell am I leaving without you, don't even think it."

"I'm being serious-"

"Excuse me," Victor broke in. "Time is short. Sir, if you would-" The robot gestured at the tray with its free hand before filling the tumbler with water from the pitcher. "You are still dehydrated, any fluids you can ingest will assist in alleviating symptoms."

He shook his head. "Leave it, I'll manage. Let's just get while the gettin's good - what are we looking at upstairs?"

"I am not certain. I know there are men who answer to my creator as well as men who...do not. I cannot explain much because I have been kept down here and can only infer from what I have overheard."

"Good enough, let's go."

The female gave the Engineer an exasperated look but Victor had already set the tray and its contents on the floor and was moving for the door; in the hallway just outside of the door two men were slumped against the wall, to all appearances peacefully asleep. Victor led the way passed them and to a door that opened into a stairwell that they quickly climbed only to find a door locked with a keypad at the top.

The Engineer looked at the woman. "Don't suppose you'd know what they use for codes around here?"

"...Dell, think on how long I've been gone."

"Step aside and be ready to run, I imagine this door will be alarmed," Victor ordered, stepping around the two humans and wedging its fingers into the gap between the door and the door frame on either side. There was a loud sound of splintering wood as the robot ripped the door free and shoved it outward; as predicted a shrill alarm went off and the robot began to jog down the hallway beyond the door with the two humans behind it, the Engineer all but carrying the female along.

They hadn't gone far when the sounds of pounding feet and not-quite-shouted orders could be heard, and soon there were men in suits and armed with pistols coming into view behind them. Victor dropped back to let the Engineer and woman go ahead of it - it was metal and considerably more bullet-proof than the humans it was assisting, after all.

They were hurrying through the door that led to the outside when the first bullet pinged off Victor's shoulder and deflected up to strike the ceiling.

"Hurry."

The robot paused to turn the lock on the door, snap the doorknob off, then slam the door shut behind them. The female was directing the Engineer to run across the street for a small alleyway between two buildings; Victor followed in their wake, its attention mostly fixed behind them waiting for the telltale sounds and signs of the men chasing them having broken down the door, though a small part of the robot wondered at what the residents of this loud, bright city must think - two battered humans and a robot, running through the streets.

They did not encounter many people as they hurried across streets and down alleys; Victor assumed most humans would be dining at this time, hence the lack of crowds, and counted them lucky that this opportunity had presented itself when it did.

Eventually the female guided them down into a wide, concrete-lined drainage ditch that ran along the rear side of several warehouse buildings; every twenty five feet a large metal pipe jutted out, and she directed them to eight pipes down, the Engineer easily hopping into it with Victor close behind.

There, in the wall of the pipe, was an old wooden door that had several locks installed above an old, brass doorknob. This one was easier to tear free than the keypad-protected door and Victor quickly moved it out of the way.

"Where does this lead?"

The woman answered it. "Into the Underground - the tunnels mirror the streets above," she added, looking at the Engineer.

"Just point me where to go," he said. He went several steps forward before turning around; Victor hadn't moved to follow, its attention turned toward the end of the pipe and the narrow view it offered of the world outside. "What are you waiting on?"

"This is as far as I will travel."

"What? Why?"

Victor turned to briefly look in at the humans, noting the Engineer's heavy frown. "It is unfortunate, but there is some manner by which I can be tracked. It is how my creator found me and by extension, you - were I to go with you, my creator would easily locate you and anyone with you. It is far better if I remain as far from you as possible."

"Zane isn't going to be happy about this and he's going to take it out on you, I can't let that happen. We'll figure out the tracking thing-"

Victor shook its head. "No, you did not find it the first time and I myself am unsure what it is or where it is. All I know is I was forced to broadcast my location against my will and there is nothing I could do to prevent that from happening a second time. I will remain behind and slow your pursuers."

The Engineer shook his head. "He's going to destroy you."

The Medicbot blinked its eyes briefly, wishing for a moment it could convey a smile in more than just blinking lights. "He already tried to wipe me from existence. I have no wish to be destroyed but I also cannot stand by and watch him torment you further. It goes against my primary purpose and I find I feel far more loyal to the man who has shown me kindness than I do to the one who would have me erased because I am acting on what he programmed me to do. I am meant to alleviate suffering in man and machine, I fulfill this purpose by freeing you both from a harmful environment."

Victor paused as it detected sounds of approaching footsteps - a lot of them, in fact - and turned to put its back to the Engineer and the woman. "You should go. And, when you reach safety, please drink water to address your dehydration."

The Engineer was silent a moment, blowing out a heavy sigh. "...all right, Victor. Thanks."

Victor nodded and listened as the man carried the female off; the doorway was empty and the humans were nowhere in sight when it glanced behind it a moment later. Satisfied and with the sounds of their pursuers getting louder, Victor backed into the door frame and braced its feet against the bottom of the frame before gripping just beneath the top of the frame on either side with its hands. Once settled it pushed outward, wood splintering as the robot wedged itself into place; a few moments later, as several men crowded into the end of the metal pipe, Victor locked its joints into place and then put itself into standby mode.

It would be no easy feat to pry the robot free from the door, buying the two fleeing humans time to get far enough away that their pursuers would lose track of them, and even if it only bought them a few minutes...

Victor didn't want to be destroyed, but falling while fulfilling its primary purpose seemed fitting. It was worth it.

* * *

"Sorry guys, I would have been here sooner but I had to detour to pick up this-"

They looked up as Miss Pauling carefully removed one of those little portable television gadgets from a padded bag slung over her shoulder, the woman popping out the little legs on its back and settling it on the makeshift table in the little office.

If Pauling had stopped to grab one of those then that meant the Administrator was going to address them "in person" - Sniper couldn't even remember the last time he'd seen the woman on screen, having only a vague memory of having been scolded for something.

Pauling had no sooner set the thing up and plugged it in when it flickered on, showing a screen full of static that slowly sharpened and brought an image into focus of the Administrator sitting in a desk chair in front of a wall full of powered off screens.

"Gentlemen," was her greeting. "I hope you have a good explanation for going off chasing God knows what without notifying me first."

* * *

Many of the lights down here were burnt out or dimming, but Shiloh was relieved to find that hardly a damn thing down here had changed.

All the store rooms she remembered, all the doors that led into basements, all the tiny apartments that were typically occupied by caretakers - everything was exactly as she remembered it, if a bit worse for wear due to the passage of time. She was guiding Dell to the northwest, as far from the club and the venues around it as they could hope to get while navigating what amounted to a giant grid made of tunnels.

They had heard sounds of people here and there, quiet voices and footsteps, but hadn't encountered anyone directly; the thought that there was someone just around the corner however had both of them on edge.

It seemed like hours before Engineer pressed them both into a dark corner, stopping to listen to echoing footsteps to try and tell which direction they were coming from. He was sweating again and felt hot, his head starting to pound, and his right arm was throbbing beneath his elbow; he'd thought it would be best to keep Shiloh on his right side since he would be at a disadvantage if anything approached him from that side, but having to compensate for the lack of his hand while carrying her had put a lot of strain on an arm he suspected wasn't even close to recovering from the loss of the hand and boy, was he paying for that now.

"Are you doing all right?" Shiloh whispered as Engineer rubbed his forearm.

"I'll live, just finally noticing this isn't healed," came his quiet reply.

"Quit carrying me then."

He stopped straining his ears to pinpoint the source of the footsteps and turned to look down at where she huddled against the wall. "I am not leaving you behind." She blew out a sigh and shook her head, and he held up a finger. "No, I'm not, quit arguing it. Compared to what I'm usually hauling around you're rather pleasant to carry, it's just we're both a bit banged up and I need to keep that in mind." She glowered at him but didn't argue further, and he went back to listening for the footsteps, nodding as they seemed to be moving further away from where they were hiding. "...all right, where to next?"

"Straight ahead, count six openings on your right, the seventh one is the one we want, it'll take us up to the street."

"And that'll put us where?"

She sighed again. "Right outside the church I got dumped at."

"...any particular reason why we're going there?"

"It's on a stretch they used to call Legitimate Savior Way - the actual street is called Essex Avenue, it's full of the only actual churches in Vegas, not the fake ones full of Elvis impersonators. If there's anywhere in this town that'll be honest and helpful it's going to be there, and Essex is almost on the outskirts of town anyway."

He leaned down to pull her to her feet and put her arm around his shoulders again. "I'm finding I don't want to know about what goes on out of sight around here."

The smile she offered him was bitter. "Alexei tried to shield me from it when I was here but it's hard not to notice the trafficking, the under-the-table deals, the trading of prestige...I purposely ignored a lot of it just to keep from getting caught up in the crap. Vegas is gilded and golden, but look in the right places and you'll find it's just pyrite."

"No wonder you hauled ass out of here when you did."

"You don't know the half of it..."

He found the passage and at its end was a door; the locks were thankfully on this side of the door and were deadbolts - they wouldn't be able to lock the door behind them but neither of them gave a damn as they climbed up into the dry but fresh evening air, finding themselves almost nose to nose with the dusty brick exterior of a large church building with a single steeple and a sprawling staircase in its front that led up to the doors.

Engineer left Shiloh crouched by the door they'd come from and eased up toward the front of the building, noting the deserted street and feeling relieved at that. "Now what?"

She smiled a bit. "We ask for sanctuary and a phone."

He picked her back up and helped her hobble up the stairs, finding the doors open; they opened into a lobby lined on either side with coat and umbrella racks (who would even need a coat or an umbrella in this region?) and a large bulletin board with quotes and calendars pinned to it for the congregation's use.

Beyond the lobby area was the main sanctuary, with its rows of pews that were arranged in a neat half-moon divided into three sections, all drawing the eye up toward the lectern and the altar. The silence in here was stifling, the air faintly smelling of mildew and age. There didn't seem to be anyone here even though there were lights on; Engineer could see a doorway leading further back into the church on the very far wall - there might be offices and a phone back that way.

They had cautiously moved into the sanctuary far enough to be standing at the back row of pews when Engineer realized Shiloh's fingers had a death-grip on his shirt at his shoulder. "My turn to ask - are YOU all right?"

She nodded, lips pressed together, and after a few moments looked off toward the altar. "Yeah, just not happy to be back here." Another few moments passed and she added "doubly so when you consider WHY I'm back here" in a quiet voice.

Anything he might have said in response flew out of his head as someone stepped out of that far doorway and then froze, standing there staring at them. He had Shiloh's arm off his shoulders in an instant and stepped around in front of her as he squared up toward the man - he was skinny, older, dressed in khakis and a blue polo shirt, was armed only with a broom and seemed genuinely shocked to see them there.

"I - uh - can I - can I help you two?" the man stammered; he was gripping his broom so tightly Engineer could see his white knuckles from here.

"We need a phone," Shiloh said, her chin almost resting on Engineer's shoulder as she leaned against his back, leaning forward to peer at the man. "And no questions asked."

The man wordlessly pointed over his shoulder toward the doorway he'd just come through. "It's uh, it's back there...are you two ok? You look, uh-"

"-we're fine," Shiloh blurted out. "It's better you don't ask and don't tell anyone we're here."

The man's eyes widened and gestured for them to follow him.

Engineer turned just enough to look at her from the corner of an eye. "Can we trust this guy?"

She blew a loud sigh out her nose, nodding. "I'm beat up, you're missing a hand, and I still think we could pound the snot out of him if he tries anything...but yeah, I think we can trust him. You're sure you can get ahold of Pauling, right?"

"I know the number to the little satellite phone she has on her all the time, yeah. Might take a few tries at most."

She went to put her arm around him again and instead he bent to scoop her up, putting her legs over his right arm. Again she fixed him with an exasperated look.

"Really, Dell?"

"Oh hush - maybe we'll find a rolling chair in there and I can just push you around if it's that big a deal. You're not that heavy, it's fine."

She rolled her eyes at his tired grin and squirmed to get her arm over his shoulders, grimacing a bit as she settled her injured knee more comfortably over his arm. He carried her easily across the sanctuary and carefully stepped sideways through the door, finding the broom-wielding man waiting for them a few feet down the hall; the hall dead-ended in an office full of religious texts, a rack of choir robes, and a large desk with an old-fashioned rotary phone sitting on it.

The man hovered near the doorway, his hands fidgeting on the broom handle. "Um, should I call the police...? Maybe an ambulance?"

"No, don't," Shiloh said, as Engineer eased her down into the desk chair. "It's better if you don't get involved - just pretend we were never here, it's safer."

The man bit his lower lip, glancing out toward the sanctuary. "That wouldn't be very charitable of me. If you two need help I'm more than willing-"

"Trust me, you don't want to get caught up in this," Engineer interrupted, turning the phone around to face him, leaning against the front of the desk. "Pretty dangerous, you might get hurt."

Engineer dialed and put the phone to his ear, listening to it ring four, five, six times. On the seventh ring he hung up and glanced up to see the man shifting from foot to foot, watching them.

"I mean it, if there's any way I can help..."

"Have any water around here?" Engineer asked. "That's all we really need, water and a phone."

"Sure, one moment." He leaned his broom against the wall near the door and disappeared out of it.

Engineer watched him go then dialed again and waited, gaze settling on Shiloh as she leaned back in the chair, her eyes shut; she looked pale and as tired as he felt...maybe he should have asked for some aspirin or something too.

Again there wasn't an answer and he hung up, gritting his teeth - of all the damn times for Miss Pauling to not be near the phone...

The man entered the room again, two glasses and a pitcher in hand, which he brought over and sat on the desk on the side furthest from where Engineer leaned. "You two aren't...trafficking victims, are you?"

"What? No, no we're - look, it's honestly in your best interest not to pry," Engineer said, reaching to snag a glass and the pitcher. "I mean it - it might get you killed."

"We were kidnapped, but not by traffickers," Shiloh added, still leaning with her eyes closed. "Do not call the police or anyone else, it'll be fine."

The man nodded, wringing his hands for a moment, seeming to notice he'd put his broom down and looking around for it. After chugging a glass of water Engineer picked the phone up and dialed again as the other man crossed the room to retrieve his broom.

"I...uh, I have a few things to get done for the night, before mass tomorrow," the man said slowly. "I'll just uh - my name is Steven, I'll be out there-" he gestured toward the sanctuary "if you need anything."

"Thanks mister," Engineer replied. The man almost ran from the room, and Engineer frowned heavily as he hung up again. "God dammit Miss Pauling, of all times..."

Shiloh chuckled weakly. "I don't know why you were expecting any of this to be easy."

He chuckled too. "Yeah, I guess." He went to dial again. "Come on, come on..."

* * *

"-two days time, gentlemen. That should give me the time needed to make a few arrangements," the Administrator was saying. "And for all our sake's could we manage to finish the job this time?"

Miss Pauling stood leaning against the wall behind the men, her attention on the television screen. As she'd expected the Administrator had had some...words...for the mercs when they'd told her that Zane was alive, and while Pauling had spoken up on their behalf - she HAD seen the man's corpse, after all - that hadn't stopped the older woman from throwing little barbed comments at them.

As the mercs wrapped up their little chat with the Administrator Miss Pauling slipped from the office; she had no idea what arrangements the woman had meant but she imagined she'd be filled in when-

With her hand still on the doorknob behind her Pauling paused as a muted sound reached her ears; it was familiar but not quite loud enough to immediately recognize, but then it hit her: the phone - that satellite phone in her other bag, the one she'd left sitting outside of the office because her hands were full.

She all but dove for the bag, opening it and pulling out the case that housed the phone; who would be calling her? Maybe the Administrator had ended the conversation and called her immediately?

"This is Pauling... ...wait, you're- you're WHERE?!"

Seconds later she was bursting through the door back into the office. "Spy - no, wait, Heavy - you're with me, hurry!"


	13. Chapter 13

Despite mutually agreeing that Steven was harmless they decided to move to sit in the sanctuary, both to keep an eye on the man and also to keep an eye on the door; they sat in the back pew in the section nearest the entryway, but at the end that placed them in a little blind spot for anyone walking through it - they would see anyone walking in before anyone walking in had a chance to spot them, and a few seconds could be all they'd need to duck out of sight among the pews.

At Engineer's urging Shiloh had remained on his right side, to leave his left arm free if they needed to move quickly, and she was trying her best not to doze off; it was so silent in here, and despite knowing they had pursuers somewhere in the city (who, without a doubt, would still be looking for them) there was an odd sense of safety, sitting here. She knew that the 'sanctity' of a church wouldn't stop the people chasing after them but it was hard not to let herself relax just a bit as she tried to find a way to sit that didn't put pressure on her side and back or strain on her injured knee.

Pauling had answered, finally, and Engineer had given her the address of this church. Neither of them knew where Pauling was at the moment and figured it could be anywhere from several minutes to several hours before help reached them - Pauling had ordered them to stay put so Engineer was hoping that meant she was nearby, somehow.

There wasn't a clock within sight so Shiloh had no idea how much time had passed, but after she'd finally gotten as comfortable as she could on the wooden but padded pew she'd taken to glancing over at Engineer every so often. He looked exhausted and she felt slightly guilty as she watched him silently massage his arm just above the bandage that covered the stump of his wrist; she really wished he'd left her and run, anything Zane might have chosen to do in retribution was something she was...hesitantly certain she could endure, figuring Zane wouldn't kill her if only to keep her around as some sort of leverage over the mercenaries.

After some time of her attention going unnoticed, she shifted to face him slightly. "Are you sleeping with your eyes open or just thinking over there?" she asked, her voice sounding unnaturally loud in the quiet even though she'd spoken in barely more than a whisper.

Engineer jumped, then glanced over at her, smiling tiredly. "Thinking, mostly, sleep'll come later." There was a pause, then a few breaths later he blew out a sigh. "You know, it's dumb."

"What is?"

He gestured at his stump. "This...thinking about this. I've been trying not to, want to keep a clear head, but I started thinking about means of escape if someone we don't want to see comes in here, and that led to me thinking about how good I'm going to be in a fight now that I'm down an appendage. Doesn't help that I'm - or was - right-handed...I'll have to learn to basically flip my mind around some so I can picture doing things opposite of how I've been doing all my life. And I kept on thinking, how's my aim going to be? How balanced will I be when I haul my sentries or tool boxes around? And then the dumbest thought of all occurs to me: how in the hell will I play my guitar now?"

At his frustrated look she smiled gently, shaking her head. "I don't think you've directly mentioned you played anything, until now."

He laughed, managing a smile and glancing down into his lap briefly before looking up toward the altar. "My grandfather bought me one when I was six, taught me to play it a bit. My dad picked up where he left off and had me playing when he came home from working...on top of everything else worrying about this just sort of feels dumb. I start thinking on how this is going to effect or even end my career, and then just - worrying about my guitar." Flexing his left hand he looked between it and the stump. "I could build a prosthetic but it won't be the same - hell, my grandfather had a prosthetic, lost most of his left arm, but I remember him cussing and spitting about it every time a part wore out. That's why he quit playing."

She was quiet for a few breaths then reached over to gently knead his arm, frowning as she felt the muscles twinging under her fingers. "I'm...sorry, even though that doesn't help things. I've said it before, I'll say it again - someone like Zane deserves to die."

"Yeah, he does," Engineer said, watching her fingers massage his arm. "He really, really does, and not just because he took my hand off. I haven't forgotten that he killed all those folks in the Badlands...he's going to wreck Victor when he catches him. He did that-" he gestured to her knee, and to her side, "-to you. I don't care how smart he is, what he might have built, or how nice he promises to be. Actions speak a hell of a lot louder than words and he's done enough to earn himself a clip to the head twelve times over."

"...not to excuse him, but he doesn't get credit for me," Shiloh said after a pause. "It was probably on his orders but he didn't pull the trigger and blow my knee out, and he didn't do this to my side, that was kind of all me."

"Yeah...now that I think about it I think you mentioned that, right?" She nodded at him silently. "What exactly did you do again? That part I don't really recall."

"I...might have dove off a waterfall called Cadaver Falls," she said after a moment, glancing away as she paused in massaging his arm. "It's not officially named that, but I imagine I don't have to explain why it's got the nickname."

He raised an eyebrow at that. "You...willingly jumped off a waterfall known for killing people."

"Well the alternative was potentially being murdered by a robot wearing Mundy's face, I had no idea at the time it was sent to capture me so I was rather concerned about not dying and getting away," she said, momentarily frowning as she turned back to him. "The falls are - they're dangerous, but only if you don't know them. The water drops down into this bowl-shaped hollow that's ringed with rocks - if you hit the rocks you're as good as dead, but the water creates this current that'll suck you under and pin you to the ground under the falls if you didn't jump out far enough. There's actually this tiny area that's mostly safe to land in, it's just kind of difficult to hit it...especially if you're being chased by a killer robot and sort of blindly leap off."

He grinned and tilted his head back, resting it on the back of the pew. "...you jumped off something called Cadaver Falls," he repeated. "You're starting to sound like my kind of crazy."

She laughed softly at that, patting his arm with the slightest hint of a flush to her face. "Hey, the robot didn't jump off after me this time, I was ready to call that a win - I'm not sure what I hit-" she added after a moment, twisting to glance down at the bandage on her side. "It wasn't the rocks, that's for sure...I'd have broken a bone or drowned if I'd hit those. Maybe there was some driftwood stuck in there that I got washed into, we'd just had some record rainfall and some flooding issues." After a moment's pause she rolled her eyes and leaned her head back against the pew as well. "Oh good, I just realized that twice now I've taken a flying leap off something and landed in a river, all to get away from a robot."

"Hell of a hobby."

"Shut up," she snorted, chuckling.

They both immediately fell silent as they heard the muted sound of one of the front doors opening; Engineer tensed and shook Shiloh's hands off his arm, moving to slide it across the top of the pew behind her head as she sat up straight and shifted to look toward the entryway to the sanctuary.

There was a muffled yelp and then Steven was hurrying out of the lobby area, still clutching his broom and looking terrified as he all but sprinted from the lobby and disappeared through the doorway that led back to the office. Moments later two sets of footsteps, one much heavier than the other, could be heard and a few seconds after that-

"Oh I really hope that's them and not robots," Shiloh whispered, as Heavy - with Miss Pauling right behind him - stepped into the sanctuary and looked around.

* * *

"...all right, which of you guys went digging through my underwear drawer?"

Spy chuckled and let her take the robot faceplate from his hand. "That would have been me, and I assure you I did not lay eyes or hands on your intimate items."

Shiloh snorted, turning the faceplate over in her hand before handing it back, grimacing and twitching slightly; Gunther was dutifully removing stitches from the gash in her side in preparation for closing the wound with the medigun, Medic watching nearby - an assessment, he had claimed, to Gunther's annoyance. She was currently sitting upright on a line of crates, her shirt off but held to her chest to preserve at least some dignity as Gunther worked on her. "I'm surprised the Administrator sent you after me...or how she even found out I was in trouble."

Spy stood in front of her with the other men seated in a loose semi-circle around them, and smiled a bit down at her. "One of your coworkers, a woman named Sandra, survived the attack and called - she was not able to tell the Administrator what had happened, but the call and its immediate termination were enough cause for concern."

"Did...anyone else survive?"

Spy shrugged. "I do not know any names but hers, unfortunately. I was not there to investigate the murders, only to find the "package" I had been sent to locate." He tucked the faceplate into his jacket, moving to settle onto a small stool he had located in one of the dusty corners of the warehouse. "When you are sufficiently mended we will need to speak at length regarding what intel you have on the club."

"About all I can give you is a floor plan, and only for those parts I actually saw. My knowledge of the place is...pretty damn old and I'm not sure what might have changed," she said with another flinch, Gunther gently patting her hip with a quiet apology. "I know the keypads on the door looked newer, the ones that were there when I was weren't really keypads - more like slightly fancier combination locks."

"Whatever you can give us," Spy said softly. "I was rather stymied on my attempts to get into the top and basement floors...I apologize for being unable to help you sooner."

"Not like I was expecting a rescue," Shiloh replied. "Though I might've actually gotten out of there if I'd known you were around and had a way to plan with you."

"Yes...I did see the end result of an escape attempt. Unfortunately I was greatly outnumbered or else I would have stepped in to assist you. How did you get outside anyway?"

She grinned slightly. "Well, once I'd gotten to the roof there was really only one way down."

Spy looked first surprised then exasperated at that. "Do not tell me you leaped off a three-story building."

"Not exactly, I climbed down the guttering as far as I could, THEN I jumped."

Spy rolled his eyes. "Incroyable..." He pushed himself to his feet with a sigh. "When you are mended, then."

Shiloh chuckled then grunted and flinched again, turning her head to stare at Gunther. "Are you sure you can tell skin from thread back there?"

Gunther laughed quietly, glancing up at her. "I am sorry, I am being as gentle as I can - there is infection setting in and the sutures are sticking. This wound was not properly cared for."

"No, it wasn't," Shiloh grumbled. "I'm not looking forward to you getting to my knee..."

"I will be as gentle as possible there as well but I suspect there will be bone debris to remove before I apply the medigun - I do not want to mend up bone shards inside the flesh, after all."

She went quiet as he went back to work, trying not to hunch over and also trying to remain still...and also trying to ignore that she was basically on display for the mercs standing around, even if all that was really showing was her bare back.

When Gunther moved on to meticulously cleaning the gash, Sniper came over to drop onto the stool Spy had vacated; for a few moments Shiloh and he simply stared at one another, before Shiloh cracked a bit of a smile. "Someone who looked like you tried to kill me."

"Yeah, I know. How'd you know it wasn't me?"

"I...I don't even remember what I said but "you" played along with it. I figured, if you were making the effort to get face to face to kill me, you wouldn't lie to me about what you were doing." She rubbed her face then went back to using both hands to keep her shirt covering her front. "If there's anyone I'm going to trust to be honest about something like that, it'd be you, but...can't lie, it kind of scared and upset me that it was "you" that walked through that door."

Sniper was silent a moment before smirking a bit. "I wouldn't kill you."

She studied his face a moment. "I believe you."

"What made you think my imposter was there for that anyway?"

Shiloh nodded her head forward and Sniper shifted on the stool just enough to glance back to where Miss Pauling sat with Soldier, Demoman, and Heavy, the four of them quietly discussing whatever was on a slip of paper Pauling held. "When I got dropped off, Pauling said if I ever saw any of you guys again..."

"...right, I get it."

She inhaled deeply through her nose then slowly exhaled, closing her eyes briefly. "Well...how have you been? Miss me?"

"Tried not to think about you too much. Why the bloody hell is your hair black?"

She snorted, then started to laugh as he finally smiled at her. "If you've got the time I've got the story."

* * *

"-as for any changes inside the rooms here-" Shiloh was saying, tapping her fingers against the paper in front of her, "-your guess is as good as mine, and typically only very important guests and "family" members get invited into the Madam's personal quarters here." She glanced around at the cluster of mercenaries. "This is the best I can do, sorry."

"S'fine lass," Demoman replied. He reached out to tug the paper closer and orient it so it was right-side up facing him; Shiloh had carefully sketched out the layout of the top floor and the basement with her approximation of size based on the measurements of a standard door as a means to give an idea of size of the areas she'd drawn out. "Better than walking in blind - between what you gave us here and what our Spy already gathered, we'll have a working plan in no time that should minimize civilian casualties." After a moment he looked up at her again. "...can't say the same for any guards what might be in there, if you've got any insight or warnings on that?"

She sighed and leaned back, stretching. "I can't help out much there either - Carmichal and his goons are new, and I didn't see anyone else I knew from my time there."

"Good enough. Wish this Underground place connected to this building," Demoman muttered, reaching across their makeshift crate-table to begin sorting drawn layouts and notes into a semblance of order. "Would make getting in here unseen pretty easy, providing we got to the bloody place in one piece."

"I can't say I'd recommend that: it's dark in some areas, it's easy to get turned around if you're not familiar with it, and even though Dell and I made it through without running into dead ends I know there's grates that sometimes get pulled down to section off places that're being worked on."

Spy stood and walked around to stand at Demoman's shoulder, leaning slightly to look down as the man organized things. "Well gentlemen, we've the remainder of today and then tomorrow before we are expected to enter this club and take out our target. I propose we get to work - all ideas on the table, so to speak."

Shiloh frowned at that. "Two days? Zane's going to be canvassing the city for us, why wait two days specifically?"

Spy shrugged, a thin line of smoke trailing in the air behind the cigarette held in hand. "Administrator's orders...she said she had a few phone calls to make. I imagine said phonecalls have something to do with the local law enforcement, as we do not need the additional problem of armed officers attempting to detain us while we are handling the security within the club."

Shiloh snorted. "In this town they might as well all be the same group...Zoya's always had an 'in' with the police, everyone who has a well-known business or old money does."

Spy smiled thinly. "In this case I believe it to be more a case of 'there is always a bigger fish.'" He carefully pinched the embers from the end of his cigarette and dropped them to the floor, grinding it underfoot as he returned the half-smoked cigarette to his case. "Do speak up if you recall anything else that would be pertinent - until then I suggest finding a quiet corner and remaining out of sight of any windows."

* * *

"What're you working on?"

Engineer jumped at the voice, not realizing he'd zoned out until he was abruptly brought out of it; he straightened in his chair and turned to see Shiloh standing in the office doorway, staring in at him with a bottle of water visible in the hand that wasn't resting on the door frame. Over her shoulder he could see Sniper - it seemed she'd reacquired her Australian shadow - and he could hear Scout talking nearby.

He glanced down at the small pile of crumpled paper in front of him; a very poorly sketched mechanical hand could be seen on the top sheet of paper that wasn't crunched up. "Not much of anything, unless you want to call it practicing for the future."

With a bit of smile she came in, Sniper and Scout filing in behind her, with her coming over to hand him the water and peer down at the paper. "Have to start sometime."

"Hey, yeah, at least we've got more paper than we know what to do with out there," Scout said with a grin, dropping into a chair and leaning it back until it was braced against the wall, leaving his feet dangling. "...can't say the same for our pencil supply though," he added, bringing all four legs of the chair back to the ground with a loud thump as he leaned forward to snag the pencil - or, more accurately, the two halves of a pencil - from in front of Engineer.

Engineer made a half-hearted attempt to beat the other male to the pieces, then leaned back in his chair with a grunt. "Yeah, yeah, I might've gotten a bit irritated." He braced the bottle of water in the crook of his elbow, then twisted the top off. "You wouldn't think drawing a line would be so damn hard, but try doing it with your offhand after years of using your dominant one." He looked between Scout and Sniper. "Shouldn't you two be out there planning?"

"Shouldn't you?" Sniper replied, dropping into a chair furthest from the door and propping his feet up on the edge of the nearest empty chair.

"Don't know how much help I'm going to be now, fellas," Engineer grunted, pausing to drink. "-won't be able to reload my weapons, won't be able to get anything up and going in any decent amount of time...hell, can't even guarantee I'll hit what I'm trying to hit, either. I'm pretty convinced I'll have to sit this one out, much as I hate to say it."

"Yeah but, you're smart, you know?" Scout said into the pause that followed. "Missing a hand don't mean you're missing a brain."

"A brain won't win a gunfight, son," Engineer chuckled. He inhaled and exhaled slowly, shifting over a bit as Shiloh tugged up a chair and sat down next to him. "If we can figure out something that'll make a lick of sense for me to be doing then I'll do it but I ain't about to be a liability for you guys, much as I'd like to be the one that gets Zane this time 'round. And why aren't you two out there?" he repeated.

Sniper shrugged. "You know how Demo and Spy get when planning...and it's not like he's any help," the man added, jerking a thumb toward Scout.

Scout launched one half of the pencil he held at the Australian. "Hey, I'll have you know I'm brilliant at planning things! My ideas work!"

"Only sometimes," Sniper said dryly, not even flinching as the pencil bit bounced off the brim of his hat. "Other times they get you shot to bloody pieces."

"That's only happened twice!"

"And you've only ever had three ideas your entire life-"

Grinning broadly at the "argument" Engineer shook his head and set the water down, going to cross his arms and ending up fumbling a bit toward the end of the movement - he normally put his right arm over his left, with his right hand hooking down under his left elbow, but the missing appendage made that rather impossible; swapping so his left was over his right didn't feel 'normal' but it was just another thing he'd have to get used to he supposed.

Shiloh was laughing as she gestured at Scout to draw his attention. "Give me that pencil - that's the end that has the point, right?"

"What? Oh, uh-" Scout briefly turned it over in his hand before stretching over the crate-table to hand it to her, shooting Sniper a scowl as he did so. "No, it's the eraser-end, ask numbnuts over there for the pointy part."

"Or a knife," Engineer added before blinking in surprise as Shiloh pulled his horrible sketch toward her. "What are you doing?"

"I was told to find a quiet corner and stay out of sight," she murmured, studying the roughed-out mechanical hand. "I need something to do, and if you won't go out there and plan then you can sit here and plan - you were my legs, I'll be your hands for a bit." She glanced up at him. "Just be descriptive."

"Uh..."

Engineer glanced down at Sniper who shrugged at him. "Don't look at me mate, I'm just here to keep an eye on her 'til they need me out there."

"Same here," Scout said when Engineer looked at him. "I'm bored, might be fun seeing her try to turn what's in your brain to something you can see on paper. You gonna put any fancy crap in that new hand?"

"I just want something that functions, Scout," Engineer said after a moment. "I can worry about making it fancy later when I've got two hands to build it with."

"Nah, nah, you need to plan big right from the start," Scout laughed. "Put something unexpected in that thing - make it fire a net or shock you or something."

"It's a prosthetic, not a prank party favor," Sniper snorted.

As Scout and Sniper began picking at one another again Shiloh rolled her eyes and dropped down to the floor in a cross-legged position, bringing the 'table' up to almost armpit height on her; she managed to get Sniper's attention long enough to get the sharpened end of the pencil from him.

"Wanting it to stay looking something like what you've got?" she asked then, lightly brushing fingers over the drawing.

Engineer frowned a bit at the crappy little sketch. "...yeah, I guess. Better keep it simple for the time being."

"All right then." Shiloh fished a clean sheet of paper out of the stack then leaned against the crate, resting her arms and even her chin atop it, pencil held lightly in her hand. "Start planning."


	14. Chapter 14

From where he sat he could see most of his team sitting across the warehouse, Shiloh sitting among them; they were all talking - he watched as Shiloh lifted her arms, miming the act of aiming a rifle down at something in front of her, acting out what she was saying. Whatever it was must have been pretty funny because while he couldn't make out individual words he could definitely hear it as Soldier and Demoman erupted into loud laughter. Engineer chuckled a bit at that but then his view of them was momentarily broken as Medic stepped around him to settle in the chair beside him with a tired sigh.

"How are you doing?"

"Much the same as before, doc," Engineer answered. "No pain, the spasms have stopped. I'm fine."

Medic smiled a bit, reaching up to pluck his glasses from his nose and rub them on a sleeve. "Your physical health is not my only concern, my friend. You have been isolating yourself."

"Hard to isolate myself when we're all stuck in the same building," Engineer snorted.

With a quiet chuckle Medic slid his glasses back on, then inhaled and sat back in the chair. "That may be true, but you have been trying your best to do so."

"Well if you fellas would just let me brood and get it over with..."

"We have all been injured - some of us quite severely - but we were always able to recover from it, reattach all the pieces so to speak. They are worried for you, as am I."

Engineer crossed his arms, remembering to put his left over his right this time, blowing out a sigh that trickled into a quiet hissing. "You've got other things to be worrying about, not me. Did you all settle on a plan for taking that club?"

Medic nodded. "Small arms, a quick strike, we'll enter very early in the morning to take advantage of minimal staff. The fewer eyes that see us the less chance of law enforcement getting involved - or at the least, getting involved quicker than we'd like. Our Spy seems convinced that our Administrator is arranging to make law enforcement a non-issue but I find I'm not entirely convinced or willing to stake our plans on an unknown variable."

"You're not going in mass cloaked?"

With a heavy snort, Medic's expression immediately soured. "Nein, we do not possess any mass cloaking devices at current."

Engineer stiffened at that. "...what? Yes we do, we had 'em-"

"-packed into a truck that was destroyed the same night you were kidnapped," Medic interrupted, his expression as flat as his tone. "Our weapons and supplies were more or less replaceable, but the prototypes we were using - they are gone, as is all our information we took from the dam."

"God dammit..." Engineer muttered, rubbing his face with his hand. "Given time I might be able to reproduce the cloakers...great, and now I'll be kicking myself for letting myself get distracted with other problems, with all that damn time I had to do something with those things."

"Do not blame yourself, I was not exactly prolific in making redundant copies of the more pertinent information we recovered either. All that remains of it now is a pile of ash and what we retain within our heads." After a moment or two Medic straightened in his chair, hands on his knees. "At any rate, it was mentioned in idle conversation that you already had plans in the making for a new hand."

Engineer nodded and slipped fingers into the front pocket of his overalls, pulling out the folded up sheets of paper he'd stored there hours earlier. Shiloh had been amazingly patient, drawing these out for him, and seeing things put to paper had helped him get a better idea of how to craft the thing whenever he managed to get back to a workshop; he awkwardly smoothed the papers out on his knee, then handed them over to Medic.

The German took a few moments studying the drawings - there were three total - then nodded thoughtfully. "Have you given thought to how you will power it?"

"Yeah, sort of," Engineer said after a pause. He leaned over to gesture at the second drawing, one that detailed the metallic cuff that would connect the mechanical hand to the rest of his arm. "See, here and here - there's places I could easily attach a battery, if I wanted it to be external, or I could rearrange the wiring here and put in smaller bearings to make space to put the power source inside the palm of the hand."

"You are not thinking of putting the powering source in your arm?"

Engineer frowned, nose wrinkling, then realized the man was joking when he glanced up to see Medic smirking at him. "No thank you, I'm not about to go the route of metal monstrosity like our good friend Zane did, plus I'm not too keen on being one bullet graze away from having battery acid in my blood stream." After a moment he went back to sitting with his arms crossed, staring across the warehouse to where the rest of the team sat and talked. "...bad enough I was debating whether I wanted to use that madman's knowledge to attach this thing to nerves so it'd move like an actual hand. At least with all that nonsense gone I won't be tempted."

Medic chuckled, then went back to looking at the drawings. "The man may be insane, but there was a great deal to be learned from him. And besides, if the idea is so distasteful to you, I believe I see another method to make this hand as realistic as you may be dreaming of."

"Yeah? How's that?"

Medic patted down his front, locating a pen tucked into a pocket on the inside of his vest, then turned over one of the sketches to the blank back of the sheet. "May I?" At Engineer's nod, Medic began to quickly scribble a sleeve-like contraption. "With the proper application of external sensor nodes sensitive enough to read the minute movements of the muscle below, along with some manner of translating those movements into informational outputs, it would be feasible to create a sort of sleeve of sensors attached to the cuff...here, or perhaps here-" Medic pulled out the sketch that detailed the hand in its entirety, tapping a few points along the cuff with the tip of his pen. "We could extend it up your forearm, potentially even to the muscles of the shoulder, and see if we cannot create a prosthetic that will seem real and organic in its movements."

As the man spoke Engineer simply stared at him, one eyebrow raised. When Medic paused Engineer looked between the messy, ink-smudged drawing of the sensor sleeve and the slightly manic look on the doctor's face. "...all right, doc, you've got my attention."

* * *

Carmichal had the sense to take a few steps back as Zane slowly turned from cleaning up an impromptu operating table to stare icily at the Spybot that had just entered the room.

"...what?" Zane whispered, his tone and volume dropping.

The Spybot let a twisted hunk of metal clatter to the floor; there was a ruined eye socket visible, about the only thing recognizable on the bit of junk.

"The imprisoned humans have escaped, assisted by the Elite Medicbot. They have not been located - unit was destroyed in pursuit of the humans."

Into the silence of the room came a quiet, high-pitched tinkle of metal hitting the floor and bouncing away; Zane had actually snapped the tip off the scalpel in his hand, and as Carmichal watched a new red stain began to seep onto the towel the man had only moments before been using to dry the scalpel.

"What about my guys?" Carmichal asked. He hated talking to that stupid robot, but... "I had men left there to watch 'em, did that thing kill them?"

"Sedated," was the robot's simple reply.

"YOUR MEN DO NOT MATTER!"

Carmichal actually jumped at the sudden thunderous bellowing, Zane whirling around to shake the freshly blood-stained towel at him. "Hey now," he started, holding his hands up in front of him, but Zane again brandished the towel at him.

"I needed those two for information and leverage," Zane snarled. "That...that..."

"Soggy old hag?" Carmichal offered, trying to make his tone helpful to defuse the man's anger or at the least, redirect it.

"If I hadn't been trapped down here catering to that woman's ego, I would have been THERE to stop their escape!" Zane growled, spinning on a heel and awkwardly pausing; Carmichal had the impression the man wanted to lash out, to move, but had no idea what to do with himself.

Finally Zane hurled the towel into the floor and ground his foot into it, his breathing coming harsh and fast. Carmichal clasped his hands behind his back and waited; wouldn't be the first time he'd witnessed a break down of one of his employers...

After several minutes of nothing but the sound of Zane breathing into the silence, the man turned around; his expression was composed into something resembling self-control though Carmichal could tell the man was grinding his teeth together.

"...call your men," Zane ordered quietly, his voice barely audible. "Send them back to the base locations we already have, and burn them to the ground. I want there to be nowhere close or familiar for those two to run...and if we cannot find the others by looking, we will flush them out by provoking them into action."

"Right away, sir. Anything else?" Carmichal shot a glance at the Spybot - that thing was standing next to the phone that was hanging on the wall. Stupid, stupid thing...

Zane was moving to pick up that metal...whatever that was, Carmichal assumed it was what was left of the other robot's head; he stood silent and watched as the man turned it over in his hands, the muscles in his jaw visibly clenching.

"...I do not understand how this could have unraveled so quickly..." Zane muttered. "I wiped my creation back to its original state...how could Conagher have..."

"Sir?"

"What? No, just - just get your men to work," Zane snapped after a moment. "Have them burn wherever they are, then backtrack to the other bases they've already searched."

Carmichal nodded and moved toward the phone, staring stonily at the Spybot until it took several steps to the side to give the human easier access. It only took a few moments to phone back to the club and give the orders; Carmichal took a second to simply watch as Zane puttered around the room, still obviously agitated and looking for an outlet to express it.

"So uh...everything about that machine of yours," he finally said into the quiet. "It all true?"

"What?" came Zane's reply, quiet and distracted.

Carmichal waited for the man to stop and look toward him before continuing. "This machine-thing of yours in the other room - it actually brings people back to life? You weren't just pulling that hag's leg?"

"No, it - I mean, yes it does but-" Zane sighed heavily and pinched the bridge of his nose before then lowering his hand to stroke his chin. "It does...everything you heard was truthful, but I never intended to give the woman access to it. There is a reason I told her it constructed other things."

Carmichal mentally pictured the surgery he'd just witnessed. "All it needs is a thingy in the brain to work? What happens if the little chip thingy breaks?"

Zane's lip curled up in a sort of half-sneer at the man's clumsy words. "Yes, Carmichal, the 'thingy' is all one needs. Given time to familiarize itself with the host, the transmitter chip will notify the machine of the death of said host and everything stored within the neural mesh's memory will be transmitted and relocated to a new brain within the created body. If the chip detects itself failing it will broadcast what it already has as a means of a back up."

Carmichal nodded slowly. "Right, right, I read you... So, what happens to the old stuff, then?"

"In a perfect world the old body would be reused for future rebirths, providing that it isn't diseased."

"But that ain't the case here, then?"

"Not so much that I am willing to depend on it, no."

Carmichal thought of the giant machine that was just a room or two away - he questioned how the man had even gotten the thing down into the tunnels here. "...is there always going to be a copy of a person in that thing?"

"Storage permitting, yes."

"What happens if someone steals the - the storage?"

Zane was back to staunching the blood from the scalpel-created cut in his hand, but at the question he slowly turned around. "What do you mean?" He gave Carmichal a decidedly suspicious look.

Again Carmichal held his hands up. "No plans here to steal it, boss, I'm just asking. You had me thinking all this time we were guarding medical equipment - which I mean, I guess that's what this is, but hell, now I know you've got a copy of your brain in that thing and that it's not just some fancy bit of hospital work. That sort of makes it a higher priority, you know? And you've told me all about the men you're hunting down. Is this something I ought to be worrying about, that someone'll take just one bit? What's it even look like?"

"It's quite simple, Mr. Carmichal: kill anyone who isn't me, you, or one of your men that comes near this machine," Zane said, eyes narrowing. "Anything beyond that is not something to be concerned with. Understood?"

"Understood, sir. I'm still increasing security down here though, if it's all the same to you."

* * *

The hours crawled by and they'd taken to sitting around in near-silence, having exhausted small talk. They were already eager to get down to business and get out of this city and the addition of boredom was making them all a bit twitchy, so when the three cars showed up outside the warehouse just as night was beginning to fall, the mercs were definitely suspicious enough to quietly debate among themselves whether they should shoot first and ask questions later.

It wasn't until one of the car doors opened and let a mountain of a man spill out that Sniper waved a hand to hush them all, putting a finger to his lips a moment before he leaned closer to the window to observe the solitary figure.

The man was...goddamn huge. Sniper hadn't even thought he'd meet someone larger than Heavy, but this man would have even Heavy looking up to address him - in addition to being tall the man was wide at the shoulders and in the chest. His arms and legs were thick, heavily muscled, and his graying hair was wild and curly and mostly gathered into a ponytail at the nape of his neck.

When the man turned enough for Sniper to get a look at his face he saw the crooked nose, the wide mouth, and eyes as gray as his hair. He was dressed in plain black slacks and a white shirt, with a heavy overcoat on and hanging open - strange to see in this climate, but if the heat bothered the man he gave no indication.

The giant calmly walked over to the door and raised a meaty fist, knocking heavily. No one else exited the cars but they remained running as they waited.

Sniper quietly relayed what he was seeing to those who were clustered nearby, but there was a small memory twitching in the back of his mind...he was pretty sure he knew this man.

* * *

The locks turned and the doorway opened; from the woman's perspective he no doubt filled the entire doorway and then some.

The giant of a man stared down at her, starting at the top of her head and making note of details as he dropped his gaze slowly until he ended at her dusty, well-worn boots.

She was looking him over as well and when they'd both finished their visual inspections, they stood in a rather tense silence.

Finally, she spoke. "You told me when I left to put the wind at my back, and to not let it blow me back to this town." She paused, then reached up to scratch at an ear. "...you should have included some advice on what to do if I got dragged back here without a choice in the matter."

His face shifted, breaking into a craggy smile. "I was thinking, you would not be caught." He glanced to either side of him and the cars behind him soon went silent, engines shutting off. "Tell me. I get very interesting phone call, rush back here from Europe. I find you have returned. I find you hiding in warehouse, with men. There is a story, yes?"

Shiloh blew out a sigh. "Yeah, there's one hell of a story."

She took a few steps back and from where he stood the giant was aware of movement near her, no doubt the men moving either to intercept him or simply to get out of the way. He gave it a few moments before he ducked through the doorway and shut the door behind him; there was a cluster of ten men here and another woman, armed and eying him. He offered them a silent nod before turning his attention back down to Shiloh.

Goodness, but he really dwarfed her...he did not remember towering over her so much when she had been his charge. "My men, they will remain in the cars."

"It's not like we'd lack the room for them," Shiloh said, looking around at the warehouse a moment before sighing again. "All right, well - guys, this is Mr. Alexei, probably our only friend inside city limits."

Alexei again eyed the men silently before his attention fell on the other woman in the room. He shook a large finger at her. "You - I know you."

Miss Pauling smoothed out a wrinkle in her skirt as she stepped closer. "I'm Miss Pauling, sir. We've never met in person but the Administrator has mentioned you before." She offered her hand and Alexei shook it politely. "I wasn't aware she was calling in local assistance."

Alexei nodded slowly, then dropped a hand onto Shiloh's shoulder - it completely covered the shoulder - and sniffed. "I would not call me local - I have been traveling overseas. I come back when old woman got word to me. We have much to discuss, but first - the story. I would much like to hear it."

"And like that, we are trusting him?" Spy asked, stepping up behind Miss Pauling.

She nodded and pushed her glasses up. "He is who he says he is, and if he's the one the Administrator told us to wait two days for..." She shrugged. "Looks like we'll be getting inside the club fairly easily, Alexei is Madam Zoya's son."

Shiloh slowly turned her head to stare up at him. "Son...? You never told me that!"

"Some things are not needing knowing," he replied. "What is needing knowing right now is, what has my mother done this time?"

Miss Pauling smiled a bit. "The cliff notes version is she's harboring a serial killer with a grudge against the Administrator."

"There's quite a bit of...side plot...tangled up in this story as well," Spy said, glancing at Miss Pauling. "Might I suggest we all sit down and take turns?"

Alexei blew out a long, steady sigh that ruffled Shiloh's hair. "This is...new, even for her. Tell me, please."


	15. Chapter 15

When she'd left the cluster of males to their discussion and came over to drop down to the floor between himself and Heavy he'd been content to let her sit in silence - he knew the need for quiet, for uninterrupted thoughts, and considering her father figure had just shown up out of the blue Engineer imagined she had a lot of things to think about.

Granted, he had thought she'd take advantage of the situation and catch up a bit (after bringing Alexei up to speed they'd all backed away a bit to at least try to give the illusion of privacy) but the words they'd exchanged were awkward and the conversation short before she'd walked away.

When the giant of a man had stepped outside the warehouse to address the men with him, she finally spoke up. "...I cannot freaking believe Zoya is his mother. I can't believe he never told me that, or that I never realized or suspected it."

Engineer shifted, scooting his butt out further on the crate under him so he could somewhat stretch out, glancing down at her. "Would it have changed anything?"

She sighed heavily and ran a hand through her hair, grimacing as her fingers got caught in tangles. "Maybe, maybe not, but when I was here I - I told that man everything, because I trusted him. He was essentially 'dad' to me, there wasn't a damn thing I kept from him."

"Feeling like he lied to you?"

"...no, not really," she answered after a long pause. "I don't know what I feel."

"Well," Engineer started, putting his arms behind his head as he crossed his legs at the ankles, "omitting information ain't the exact same as lying. He probably had his reasons." After wiggling a bit more to fit his backside more comfortably to the crate he turned his head to look at her, smiling a bit. "You could have asked him while you had his attention, you know."

She shook her head. "I don't want to do any sort of catching up until we've gotten Zane again and I know..."

"Know what?"

She rolled her eyes after a pause. "And I know what's going to happen to me." After a breath or two she looked up at him as she brought her knees up to her chest, draping her arms over them. "The Administrator might not ship me off back to Colorado after this, so who knows what the hell will even happen."

"Don't let her push you around."

Both Shiloh and Engineer looked up as Sniper approached, Spy behind him. "Don't let her scare you into something," Sniper continued. "She's an old bitch but she's a businesswoman and can be reasoned with, and I think you're finally too bloody deep in all this to expect to be shipped somewhere quiet when we get this business done with."

"Yes Mundy," Shiloh replied, tone flat, "by all means, remind me that I can't walk free. ...not that I got to go free the last time either."

"You will have time to contemplate the inevitable," Spy interrupted with a snort. "We are moving out, you are remaining here with Miss Pauling. Let us move, laborer."

Engineer raised an eyebrow. "Excuse me? At no point during our planning was a role for me discussed."

"Plans change, get up and come on," Spy replied. "Unless you are wanting to stay here with the women."

* * *

The ground floor of the club was elegant and full of decadence, all reds and golds and deep purples with silver and black signs displaying pricing for the club's various forms of entertainment and dinners along with fresh-cut flowers in urns decorating the main lobby. There was a dining room to one side, sharing its space with a stage and a little open area for dancing; in the other direction were smaller smoking rooms and a kitchen tucked into the back corner.

The entrance doors swung open silently, their footsteps echoing loudly as they walked in behind Alexei. There were three men dressed in black suits within the lobby, firearms strapped to their hips in plain view, and two women standing behind the large black marble hostess podium; the women went pale at the sight of so many armed men walking in, but nodded and mumbled greetings to Alexei before hurrying to stand at the doorway of one of the smoking rooms, well out of the way.

The black-clad men, on the other hand, all stiffened and drew their weapons, one of them shouting for the mercs to disarm.

Alexei held up a hand, and two of the three men immediately holstered their guns once again; the third man kept his out and trained on the group, but Sniper could notice a telltale shake to the man's hands - this one must be one of those brought in with that Carmichal fellow Spy had warned them about.

"Down. Or be removed," Alexei ordered, his voice booming in the otherwise silent room.

Sniper watched the aiming man's face bulge a bit as he jabbed his tongue into his cheek - he was obviously thinking on the consequences of not listening to the huge man - but after several moments he slowly slid his pistol back into the holster at his side. One of the other two that had obeyed immediately went to unbuckle that man's belt and remove the weapon entirely. Alexei nodded in approval and made a casual gesture toward the dining hall area. The two obedient men frog-marched the third into the room, and Alexei stepped aside to allow the two women to cross the room and follow them.

"So far so good," Spy muttered then, his attention on the doorway that the five had just disappeared through. "This is proving easier than expected."

Alexei sniffed and took a moment to listen to their surroundings before responding. "Those who know me know better. Those who do not, will know. Follow - we head upstairs now."

Along with the ten mercenaries there was Alexei, plus six men he had brought with him; they were all silent, stone-faced men, and Sniper wasn't even certain they all spoke English, having only heard Alexei address them in Russian with them responding in kind.

The trip up the stairs to the top floor was a quiet and, at least for the mercs, a tense affair, but the doors opened to yet another silent floor that was as richly decorated as the previous; there were far more guards up here but as before the ones who knew Alexei were the ones who stood down to allow the man passage, hardly batting an eye at the men with him.

The ones that were part of Carmichal's little army were disarmed and taken away by Alexei's men, and after a short walk through a hallway they were all clustered before two ornate double doors - these led to the Madam's personal quarters.

Alexei went to open them and found they were locked; in contrast to how he'd banged on the warehouse door, he actually politely knocked on this one and proceeded to hold a quiet conversation in Russian with whoever was on the other side.

Listening in, Spy finally gently tapped Heavy's arm. "What is he saying?"

"He asks for entry, is being told the Madam is ill and not accepting visitors," came Heavy's quiet response, leaning down a bit so he could be heard by the shorter Frenchman. "He insists none can lock him out of his own home, but the one inside insists he is not getting inside."

Spy raised an eyebrow at that, and a faint smirk traced across his features. "I see. This is about to get interesting, I imagine."

Heavy mirrored the man's smirk. "...and now he warns the other to stand from the door."

Spy chuckled quietly and turned to look behind him at where Scout stood on tiptoe, trying to see around and over his teammates. "Scout, radio back to Miss Pauling and inform her it is safe for her and Miss MacKenna to join us. I have a feeling this will be over quite quickly."

* * *

To anyone within the room the double doors seemed to explode inward like they'd been wired to an explosive even though the only thing that had struck them was a well-aimed kick from the behemoth of a man on the other side; the man who had not heeded the giant's warning to stand back fell to the floor in a heap, bleeding and crumpled under the remnants of the doors. The others had weapons in hand and were ready to make their stand until Alexei stepped through.

The mercs along with the men of Alexei's that had been with them since the warehouse filed in behind him, taking up positions near the door and along the back of the room.

Or, well, rooms - this area, the Madam's personal quarters, were as fancy as the rest of the club and were arranged more like a small apartment: this immediate room they had entered was an office area with a heavy-looking desk of dark wood sitting in the middle and two heavily cushioned chairs arranged in front of it, with a large dining table and chairs sitting nearer to the door that was made of the same dark wood as the desk. Off to the side of the desk was a small sitting area with a love seat, two more chairs, and an honest-to-god fireplace built into the wall. The wall behind the desk was almost completely made up of wide windows, each hung with heavy blinds that were drawn closed, and to their left and right were more doors, the one to their right partially ajar and showing hints of a library-esque space.

Alexei surveyed the space, looking each armed man in the face. "Down. Or be removed."

One by one the guards slowly holstered their guns, looking at one another uneasily until after a moment they moved together to arrange themselves in front of the door on the left wall.

At their head was a young-looking man with black hair cropped close to his skull, dressed in black cargo pants tucked into combat boots and, of all things, a black tactical vest that he wore over a short-sleeved black shirt; he took several steps forward, squaring up to Alexei, and held up a hand.

"I am sorry, sir," he said, his Russian accent thick but his English understandable. "The Madam is ill. We have orders to prevent all entry, even you."

Alexei snorted. "None will lock me out from my home, much less my own mother. Step aside, Yuri. That is only order you need worry about."

The man referred to as Yuri frowned, and glanced between Alexei and the door behind him. "...she will not accept that."

"I am considerably more dangerous than elderly woman. Move, or be removed."

Yuri pressed his lips together, but finally nodded and stepped aside. Alexei nodded approvingly and looked over his shoulder at the mercenaries. "Follow."

"There even going to be room in there for all of us?" Scout asked. "Going to be a freaking mess if we get crossfire going."

"There will be one gun in that room I cannot control, this is only danger," came Alexei's answer.

This next door proved to be unlocked and opened into a large, roomy bedroom; at the very far end was a giant four post bed with gauzy green and purple curtains obscuring the view of the one in it. There was another small sitting area here with another loveseat and a chair with a glass-topped coffee table between them, a few used wine glasses and an overflowing ashtray sitting atop it amongst a few newspapers and show billings. There was a door near the bed that suggested a bathroom area, and a large walk-in closet was visible as well, its doorway filled with hanging beads rather than a proper door.

Alexei wasted no time in leading them toward the bed, reaching up to rip the hanging curtains down and reveal the frail woman laying in a sea of pillows and satin sheets.

Madam Zoya looked positively ancient without make up or fine clothing, and in addition some of her hair had been shaved away with a thick bandage wrapped around her head.

She blinked blearily up at Alexei, her eyes cloudy with sleep, pain, and, if the bottles on the small bedside table were any indication, probably a good deal of painkillers as well. "You. You should not be here."

"Good morning, Mama. These men, they would like a word with you. When their business is complete, I would like a word."

Huffing and grunting, and adjusting the thin silk nightgown she wore across her shoulders as she moved, the woman sat up and gave them all a venomous glare. "There is nothing to say."

"On the contrary, madam," Spy spoke up. "I think we have a great deal to discuss, and allow me to suggest a starting topic: where is the man known as Ebenniah Zane?"

"Not your business."

"Place hands on bedsheets," Alexei interjected dryly, as the woman's hands began sliding under the sheets. "I know of gun kept there."

"Traitor son," she hissed, dropping her hands back into her lap only to start twisting the bedsheets between them. "To think I saved you."

Alexei's nostrils flared, and his tone was decidedly cold as he replied. "Saved ME, perhaps. But you go too far this time - am not willing to look away as I always have."

"What do you know? You side with others against own mother."

"You know why I do," Alexei murmured, voice dropping in volume. "You will answer to them."

"They are HER hounds."

"Then perhaps you should have exercised better sense than to provoke pack leader." Alexei inhaled and exhaled slowly, then turned and bowed to the mercs. "Question to heart's content, she brought this on herself. I will not see others fall with her."

* * *

At the doorway to the club Shiloh hesitated, Pauling stopping several steps ahead of her to turn and look back.

"Something wrong?"

"I'm not really looking forward to this."

Pauling shrugged and gave her a somewhat sympathetic smile. "Better to get it over with quickly would be my suggestion, sort of like ripping off a bandaid."

Shiloh wrinkled her nose, thinking of the bandages she'd worn for what seemed like forever, reminded of the sting of Gunther pulling the surgical tape off. "Not helping, Miss Pauling."

"Standing on the street afraid of a door isn't going to help anyone."

Frowning at that Shiloh finally began moving again. "Not afraid of the door, I just don't like the idea of seeing Zoya again."

Scout was waiting for them in the lobby and led them up to the top floor, and before they'd even reached the shattered double doors they could hear a very loud argument - one voice, shrill and high, and another low and reserved, both speaking Russian - coming from the room ahead of them.

"What have we learned so far?" Pauling asked, pausing in the doorway and peering inside to do a quick headcount.

"Zane ain't here, we even searched the other floors and all the rooms in this place. We found where he'd been staying but there wasn't any sign of where he might've gone," Scout answered. He crossed his arms and jerked his head toward the bedroom door. "She wasn't screaming that much when I went down to get you two up here, but man, lady got a set of lungs on her for someone that old."

Pauling smiled a bit. "Zoya's been a thorn in the Administrator's side for decades now, I'm honestly not at all surprised to finally see a meltdown - it's been a long time coming."

"A thorn how? I don't see how anybody would be dumb enough to take pot shots at the Administrator."

"Zoya's got a lot of oversea contacts and networks of communication, a lot of them fairly innocent but still important to the Administrator's business interests. Zoya's always been a bit difficult to work with but in recent years she's been biting the hand that feeds her, so to speak."

Shiloh raised an eyebrow at that. "...what? How?"

Pauling glanced at her. "I can't share much more than that, but there's a lot of things going on behind the scenes that not a lot are aware of. Zoya's been a valuable resource, but even if she wasn't being a royal pain she's also getting old - the Administrator was expecting her to "retire" ages ago, but here we are. I imagine there won't be any way around retirement now."

Scout scratched at his chin as the argument from the other room continued; after a moment or two he turned to Shiloh. "You really had no idea about all this?"

"No, I didn't," Shiloh said quietly. "I already said Alexei shielded me from a lot, and I knew Zoya wasn't completely clean, but until recently I...man, it stings to realize exactly how clueless I've been."

"Ah, don't beat yourself up over it," Scout said, holding up his hands. "I mean, you were kept out of all this, right? On purpose. That is just really surprising...I wonder why the Administrator didn't recruit you off the bat, you know? She wanted you a year ago, why not before that? If she was in with this Zoya lady she had to have known about you."

"I was just some idiot kid back then-"

"-I'M an idiot kid depending on who you ask," Scout interrupted, snorting. "I don't think she cares about age, just skill, and let me tell you, I'm skilled. So age ain't important."

"It doesn't matter much, honestly, it's just kind of surprising to learn all this was going on." Shiloh sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose, then rubbed her face with her hands.

"...you ok?" Scout asked into the pause that followed.

"You know, I've spent a lot of time worrying about what it meant to get caught up in this, and I was already caught up in your Administrator's business before I even knew she existed. I kind of want to run into the woods and hide and try forgetting I ever heard about this," Shiloh replied, voice muffled behind her hands.

Scout grinned at her. "Put like that it's like we were coworkers way before we even met, yeah? 'cept you got a cushy club job and I get to run around bashing heads in."

She peeked at him through her fingers, smiling despite herself. "I don't think it works exactly like that, but - what's the saying, six degrees of separation?"

"I don't know but it sounds important."

She chuckled at that, rubbing her eyes before inhaling deeply and letting her hands drop to her sides. After another deep breath she lifted her chin and slowly strode over to the doorway to peer inside Zoya's bedroom.

The others were inside, arranged around the room and in various stages of watchful indifference as, front and center, Alexei was calmly responding to Zoya's screeching tirade. It was still all in Russian and, despite Alexei's attempts years ago to teach her, Shiloh hadn't a clue what was being said, but the moment the old woman noticed her in the doorway her face twisted into a mask of hatred as she jabbed a skeletal finger in the air toward her.

Shiloh froze at the sight of Zoya and in that instant the woman shouted something unintelligible, spittle flying, then one hand was plunging under the sheets bunched in her lap; in the same moment Heavy's fist swung back and connected solidly with Shiloh's sternum, sending her toppling backward and into the floor to lay on her side, stunned and gasping, and from the room came a single, deafening gun shot.

"You all right? You breathing? Jesus man, you trying to kill her?"

Shiloh could hear Scout asking if she was ok as hands on either side of her were tugging her back to her feet - Scout was on her left, Pauling on her right - and she blurted out a quick "yep" when she got enough air into her lungs.

Heavy was in the doorway, looking down at her. She rubbed her chest and gave him a questioning look. "The hell was that for? What just-"

Heavy's response was interrupted by Alexei storming out of the room, a revolver the size of a hand-cannon held in hand, the barrel smoking. "Yuri!" The bellow shook the wine glasses on the table behind them.

Yuri stepped into the large man's view, nodding curtly. Alexei gestured back toward the bedroom, the Russian coming out of him as sharp as glass; Yuri gave a very short answer, and Alexei spun on a heel to address the mercs who were still gathered in Zoya's room.

"The man you seek, he is in the tunnels. Yuri will take you. I have death to tend to. Get moving."

After a pause, it was Demo who uttered a "you heard the man, lads," and then they were moving with Yuri at their head, toward the stairs.

Shiloh stood to the side with Miss Pauling, letting the men file passed them; Sniper gave her a small nod as he passed, Scout moved to leave with them with only a curious glance toward the bedroom door. Alexei stood midway between the bedroom door and the little sitting area, gun still in hand, jaw set and staring a hole through the floor.

Engineer alone paused, letting everyone else leave before turning back to Pauling and Shiloh. "You two all right?"

"What the heck happened in there?" Pauling asked, pushing her glasses up her nose.

Alexei very slowly shoved the revolver back inside his over-sized coat. "My mother, she is succeeded. If you have business here you discuss with me."

"That's..." Pauling paused, looking between Alexei and the doorway. "...one way to force a retirement, I suppose. I'll help with the clean up, then could I use your phone to inform the Administrator?"

"Yes, fine. Shiloh?"

Shiloh silently looked at him; after a long couple of minutes, his expression melted into one of relief tinged with a bit of regret.

"I am sorry for her misery. I would not let her shoot you. You understand?"

After an equally long pause, Shiloh nodded without speaking and let her gaze drop to the floor before stepping around them to have a look in the room.

Alexei's shot had blown the top left part of the woman's head off; the headboard of the bed was splattered with gore and had a sizable hole blown into the wood as well. Zoya's claw-like hands were limp on the sheets, the body toppled backwards, and there was the faintest glint of silver visible near her right hand - the metal-trimmed grip of a pistol that Zoya had just about seized and drawn on her.

It was...very strange to see the corpse of the woman who had made life so miserable for her.

And to know Alexei picked her over his own mother was even...stranger.

"Engineer! Yo, Engie!"

Shiloh jumped and spun around, exiting the room to see Scout poking his head through the office doorway.

"You coming or what?"

"To do what, Scout?" Engineer asked, sounding exasperated. "I already said I can't-"

"Can't what?" Shiloh interrupted.

Engineer looked over to her. "Can't shoot my shotgun, won't be able to load my pistol and likely won't hit a damn thing with it anyway. I ain't got sentries with me and I don't know how quickly I could even get them set up as I am now."

"Then I'll be your hands," Shiloh said once he'd gone silent.

Scout and Engineer both got out a "no" as Alexei settled a huge hand on her shoulder. "Absolutely no," the Russian growled. "Not possible. Dangerous, too dangerous."

She shrugged his hand off. "No, I'm going, you can't stop me - none of you can," she added, glaring first at Engineer, then at Scout. She felt hot - angry, upset, finally something was making it through the haze of recent revelations, and she found herself pointing a shaking finger in at Zoya's corpse. "THAT happened because of this Zane guy, I got kidnapped, dragged back here, and tortured. Dell lost a hand, Mundy and I about died the first time 'round AND this asshole mass murdered several town's worth of people. I'm done with him. I'm going, and I want to see him bite it." Shrugging off another attempt of Alexei's to put a hand on her shoulder, she began to stride for the door. "How many men could possibly be down there? It can't be any worse than having an army of robots shooting at you."

She stopped and turned to look at Engineer; beside him Pauling was trying very hard not to smile, and he seemed at a loss for words as he lightly bit his lower lip.

"Why are men different than robots?" she said into the silence. "You didn't have a problem with me fighting those."

"That was then, this is now," was Engineer's reply.

"...fine, YOU stay here with Pauling, I'm going."

* * *

She jogged alongside Scout down the hallway for the stairs, and as they were stepping through the stairwell door they heard a set of footsteps pounding after them. Halfway down the flight of stairs Engineer caught up to them, looking grim but determined.

"All right, let's get this jerk and get home," Scout said into the silence, one hand tugging at his dog tags as he grinned at them, cockily hopping down the stairs backwards. "I am so ready to get home, this heat is nuts - I thought Teufort was hot but this is even worse, and I didn't even think that was possible."

Scout turned around and started down the stairs facing forward after a moment, still yammering and, Shiloh assumed, making smalltalk to relieve tension. It was comforting in a way even if his continuous stream of words wandered from topic to topic without pause.

When they'd reached the ground level, Engineer stopped in the doorway and grabbed her by the arm. "Are you sure about this?"

He was staring at her, concern on his face; she still felt angry but it felt more directed now - everything that had happened was a result of Zane and his machinations, and it was very easy to remember that as her gaze flicked down to the stump of Engineer's right wrist. "Yes, no, maybe. It seems...easier this time? We don't have an army between us and where we're going."

He left out a faint chuckle at that. "That's true, but, all that that happened up there. Are you all right?"

She reached up to gently close a hand on his wrist and remove his hand from her arm. "We've got a job to do, I can figure everything out after that."

* * *

"Just wrap her in sheets."

Pauling helped Alexei untuck the sheets and roll Zoya's remains into it, eying the Russian quietly. "Do you have a place to dispose of this or are you wanting an actual burial?"

He was silent for a long moment. "Dispose. It would be best if no one remembers her."

She raised an eyebrow at that. "If you're sure about that."

Alexei looked up at her from the other side of the bed. "She made life miserable for all around her. Let news of her death be comfort enough, she is not deserving of a marble marker."

With a nod Pauling helped tuck in the ends of the sheets, noting the bloodstain on the mattress underneath. "Do you want the mattress cleaned or burned?"

Alexei snorted loudly and straightened. "...burn it, with her. I do not care much at this point."

"Mmm, I'll need a vehicle capable of transporting the mattress then, I only have a car at my disposal at current. At least she's not that heavy - oh, right, the phone. Is there one in here?"

He gestured toward the desk in the other room; Pauling wiped a few blood smears off her hands onto the sheets and then moved toward the desk. "Thanks, I'll only be a moment. She might want to speak to you, you know."

"Am aware, yes."

Pauling had dialed in all but three numbers when Alexei stepped into the office area, hands clasped behind his back.

"She will be safe with them?"

"Who? Shiloh? I can't think of any place safer than with those guys, actually," Pauling replied, finger hovering over the next number in sequence. "She's already been through one huge mess with them and while she got banged up some she obviously survived it. I don't think you need to worry, especially since I greatly doubt Zane has an army hidden down in those tunnels." She dialed two more numbers then again paused before the final one. "I'm...actually somewhat surprised you let her go that easily."

Alexei nodded slowly, lips pressed together into a thin line, and as Pauling's finger hit that last number-

"It was never easy letting her go. But it was always the right choice."

* * *

He was so focused on what he was doing, on just getting it done so he could focus on something else, that he completely missed the insistent beeping for several seconds; Zane blinked and tore his eyes from the screen in front of him where he had been painstakingly typing in that infuriating old woman's input variables and shifted to his left to look at a second screen.

"What in the world..."

This screen was blinking bright red, a warning message in capital letters displayed over the rest of the information lazily scrolling by underneath it: ERROR: PARAMETERS NOT FOUND. CONTINUE Y/N [INPUT FILE PATH - RETRY C/CN ]

"Parameters not..." Zane quietly repeated, rubbing his chin. Parameters not found meant-

Well. Well then. He chuckled, reread the error, chuckled again, and after a moment the chuckling turned into full-blown laughter.

"Oh, oh that is just wonderful," he crowed, dropping back into his chair and wiping away tears at the corner of an eye.

Parameters not found - they weren't found because that's what he was currently entering! Ha! That woman hadn't survived the operation after all!

Zane was still laughing when Carmichal poked his head into the control room. "...uh, sir? Everything all right?"

"Better than all right, Mr. Carmichal!" Zane called out, scooting his chair back to the screen he'd just been working at.

Carmichal seemed a bit taken aback at the man's sudden jolly mood. "Do I even want to know?"

"Perhaps not! But do call the club and offer my condolences to the staff on the passing of their angelic little benefactor," Zane replied, voice breathy as he tried to get his laughter under control. "What a day, what a FINE day this is!"

Hands shaking Zane went back through everything he'd just entered - it was so hilariously coincidental that he'd almost been done! He felt light-headed, giddy, as he selected Zoya's file and tapped the Delete command.

It was as though a heavy weight had been lifted from him; that woman had no claim to his machine, no right to the immortality it promised. He was finally free of her.

Certainly, there was a mild worry that her successor wouldn't be so supportive of Zane's vendetta but then...well, Helen certainly had other enemies he could approach who would be more than happy to be free of the bitch, and with his machine constructed and hidden away what did he need to care?

Hell, with this machine in order it was even a possibility he'd outlive Helen before he ever found her. It wasn't ideal and would be wholly unsatisfactory, but so long as the woman wasn't still around could he really complain? Dead was dead...and if he missed his chance to make her pay for the strife and ruin she'd brought to him, perhaps something in the next life would make her as miserable as he.

"Such possibilities," he murmured. "At last, a light at the end of the tunnel approaches..."

"Hey uh, boss-" Carmichal was poking his head back into the control room.

"Yes, what is it?"

"Not to burst your bubble sir but that light might be an oncoming train - no one answered at the club. At all. I let it ring forever and tried eight times. And Zoya's line was busy."

Zane frowned slightly, sitting up in his chair. "...what do you mean, no one answered? Busy?"

"Just that - no one picked up and the line that goes to that phone right on the woman's desk was busy. I didn't get through to anyone and there's always a broad at the front desk."

"...odd..."

And just like that, his mood began to sour.


	16. Chapter 16

"What the hell are you - ...you know what? Just never mind."

"Where are we going, exactly?" Engineer interrupted, before Sniper had a chance to say anything further on Shiloh's presence.

The three of them were jogging along behind the rest of the team, Yuri at their head; Engineer had the nagging feeling that they were being hunted or watched somehow, and couldn't be sure if it was an instinct he should be listening to or if it was something left over from his and Shiloh's escape through these damned tunnels earlier. They'd encountered a few people down here who'd all done their very best to pretend they didn't notice the giant group of armed mercenaries jogging along - maybe there were stragglers that were making Engineer's nerves prickle?

"Everything down here looks the damn same."

"Sort of the point," Shiloh replied, giving the walls a quick glance. "The tunnels mirror the streets above, you have to know the city to navigate down here."

"You know where we're at then?" Sniper asked.

She shot him a sheepish grin. "Not exactly, this stuff we're in now wasn't here when I was - I have no idea what's ahead of or above us now."

Sniper snorted. "Guess we'd better not lose our tour guide then."

"Well, I could probably get us back to where I know where I'm at, and from there it wouldn't be hard to find an exit."

Yuri was leading them on a meandering, somewhat confusing path that Sniper eventually gave up trying to keep track of. He didn't like being in this enclosed space without knowing the specifics on what they were about to encounter; there'd been no time to send Spy ahead for recon, and while getting Yuri to speak was like pulling teeth when he did finally answer their questions about what to expect he couldn't give them a head count on how many of Carmichal's men were down here. He'd mentioned he'd seen around twenty five different men over the span of time Carmichal had been present at the club, but as Yuri was one of the Madam's personal guards he rarely had to deal with anyone not within the old woman's immediate presence.

The only concrete fact the young Russian could give them was there couldn't be a small army down here, because the other business owners in Vegas would have responded with adding to their own security - just because they all generally went along with Zoya didn't mean they'd tolerate an armed "takeover" of the Underground. That they hadn't seen any sign of an arms race down here was a good sign, he'd insisted.

"Or," Spy had pointed out, "no one noticed Zane and Carmichal moving in."

But Yuri had shook his head. "Nothing goes unnoticed in this city."

With that in mind Sniper couldn't really decide if this would be a walk in the park or an incredibly frustrating mission, and to be honest he was hoping it was the former option due to...well, because of the two he was jogging next to.

Engineer was a capable man, even if he was down a hand, but a gunfight was the absolute last place anyone ought to be doubting their own skills, and Shiloh didn't have the training or the years of experience the rest of them did. The assault at the dam had proven she had guts and a considerable heap of luck, but luck didn't trump skill.

Looks like he'd have to keep an eye on her. Again.

* * *

"Outer entrances have been locked down, I've got my boys watching the doors but - not going to lie, boss, we're just not equipped or prepared for a damn assault."

Zane ground his teeth together and ignored the man, pacing back and forth in front of the main control console for the machine that was in the level below.

He'd known when Conagher and that woman hadn't been immediately recaptured that time was ticking away before the mercenaries inevitably came looking for him, but...so quickly? And how had they gotten into the city without being seen by the Madam's allies?

It was just so unfair...but at least this time he had his full mental facilities at hand. Crushing Helen's little attack dogs would not be difficult.

* * *

The start of the gunfight happened suddenly enough that both parties were caught rather flat-footed: Carmichal's men were standing in the tunnel that dead-ended in a fortified door near stacks of brick, obvious leftovers from either an expansion or a repair to the tunnel walls. Those bricks were the only things that saved most of them from the first volley of bullets that came screaming their way when Heavy and Scout, at the front of the merc team, caught sight of them and fired essentially "from the hip" even as Carmichal's men were halfway through drawing their own weapons.

Medic's shield snapped into place to block most of the oncoming fire from the crouching men, a few bullets making it through before the shield was fully in place to strike at the mercenary team; Heavy's left arm took two bullets, one of which went clean through and hit Soldier in the shoulder behind him. Scout fared better with only a minor graze, though at least one bullet zipped cleanly through their entire group in a narrow miss that had them scattering toward the walls.

When Heavy and Scout had open-fired those men that didn't manage to duck behind the bricks dropped behind them limply, not likely dead but definitely bloodied and dazed from the rain of buckshot from Heavy's shotgun and Scout's scattergun - neither were exactly the best weapon of choice at this distance but considering there was a city (and, as a result, a lot of weight) above their heads they'd left out all explosive ordinance as well as Heavy's minigun; Soldier and Demoman hadn't been pleased but they at least recognized that it was better to not drop a city block down on their heads, and Heavy himself had pointed out that Sasha could potentially chew through walls in a manner of seconds (putting support structures in danger of accidentally being reduced to rubble) and so everyone had armed themselves with pistols and shotguns.

This wasn't the best place to hold a battle; they were in a straight tunnel that had only the meager cover of brick protrusions spaced evenly up its length - load-bearing supports of some kind, Engineer had said - but they provided maybe a quarter cover to just a single man...this would leave them entirely dependent on the medic shields to keep them from being shot to pieces, with their only other advantage being that the men behind the bricks ahead of them had to peer around or over the stacks whereas the mercs had a clean line of sight regardless of where they stood behind the shield.

At the back of the group Shiloh had been essentially clothes-lined from two directions, both Engineer and Sniper slamming her back into the wall when the first shots had been fired. She was pressed against the wall between them now, sucking in noisy breaths.

"Wasn't expecting that," Engineer grumbled over the sound of gunfire, leaning forward just enough to get a look around Shiloh. "They knew we were coming."

"Maybe," Sniper grunted, pulling his rifle up and holding it in one hand, the barrel pointed at the ceiling. When the shield snapped into place he pushed off the wall and had it up and aiming. "Damn bricks... Just reinforces the fact this area's new. That Madam must have built this place just for that nut job..question is, what's he got in there to keep us out?"

"Don't suppose you know of any other surprises we might get down here?" Engineer asked, looking at Shiloh.

She massaged her throat and cleared it before replying. "If he's here and under the Madam's protection there's not a soul in Vegas who'd touch him, he wouldn't NEED a lot of anything down here...but that doesn't mean there isn't anything."

And it was at that point that the door at the end of the tunnel swung open.

* * *

He waited until he was certain Zane wasn't coming back, then he'd quickly gone to the door and locked it; this would keep Zane out (for a time) and trap him inside the room, but the man had been patiently waiting for exactly this chance.

Carmichal reached up to loosen his tie as he casually turned to regard the control panel that took up most of the wall near the door - the top half of the wall was paneled with windows that looked over the massive machine on the level below them. He'd had plenty of time to study the machine as he'd "watched" Zane load the...freezer, or whatever that chilled storage area was called, with cadavers and questionably obtained corpses.

This control panel was where Zane input the commands to make the machine run as well as controlled the security systems that were put into place to satisfy Zane's paranoia that someone would mess with his precious machine...the part Carmichal was most interested in was down in the heart of the machine itself, that bit of machinery that stored the copies of people within it for use later.

He took his tie off completely and rubbed his neck, moving to examine the control panel - somewhere on this thing was the switch or the button, whatever, that would open a section of the floor that led down to the machine's level. Zane had opened it once or twice while Carmichal had been with him, now where was it...

The floor ground open and Carmichal jogged down the stairs, tossing his tie aside and pulling a cigarette case from his jacket. Carmichal did not smoke and going without for so long was killing him...this entire frustrating ruse had been killing him, Carmichal was an insufferable, classless idiot.

But his name, his face, and his role were useful.

He was so, so close to abandoning this damned identity...

Jogging across the floor to the machine, "Carmichal" pried a side panel open, lit his cigarette, then carefully leaned in to begin looking for connectors. He needed that storage component...

* * *

Zane stepped through the door and eyed the few men of Carmichal's that were still standing; they were taking shelter behind the stacks of bricks here and were under fire from those twice-damned mercenaries. Very briefly he entertained the thought of capturing at least one of the mercs to find out how they had arrived so quickly, but...well.

"It is amazing," he bellowed, thrusting his gauntlet-clad hand out to grip the brick piles and lift them up to hang in the air in front of him and Carmichal's men, forming a lazily floating shield that readily absorbed the projectiles flying their direction. "I was so willing to let you all live, to make up for the harm I previously caused...all it required was a bit of cooperation, but I am beyond attempting to negotiate now. I am going to take great joy in ridding myself of you, and an even greater joy in finally wiping that old bitch off the face of the earth."

With the bricks exploding in showers of powder under the incoming fire, Zane clenched his hand and gestured, sending the majority of the bricks careening down the tunnel to slam into the Medic's damned shield; the shield did not vaporize the bricks as it did bullets and explosives, and while the bricks could not penetrate it there was now a massive cloud of debris and dust clinging to its front, blocking the mercenaries's view.

With a quick flick of his fingers, Zane released the bricks and blasted the force field forward; the expanding pressure wave-like field slammed into the falling bricks and propelled them forward through the shield even as the wave itself pushed through the shield and sent the mercenaries in the very front flying backward to collide with their fellows.

The Medic's shield flickered and faltered, the man likely taken off his feet from either a flung teammate or the wave striking him. Zane grinned fiercely and reached out to blindly grab for someone - anyone - within the dust cloud, eagerly anticipating squeezing the life out of them.

Then the lights in the ceiling went out, plunging the tunnels into total darkness.

* * *

Amongst the gunfire and the clattering of bricks, amongst the groans of those who had been tossed backward by Zane and his damned gauntlet, Shiloh heard a loud "Piss." from Sniper in front of her as the tunnel went pitch black.

A moment later there was a distinct red line cutting through the darkness, highlighting the dust in the air - Sniper had clicked the laser point on his scope on, and while the light was meager it was just barely enough to make out the Australian's face and the scowl on it.

"Back, get back!" came Gunther's voice from ahead.

Shiloh jumped as Engineer's hand groped at her hip, then found her arm and gripped her sleeve tightly. "Come on, move it-" He began to drag her backward, stumbling slightly as he blindly shuffled backward. "Are there electrical boxes down here?"

"Yeah, there's junctions where power for entire blocks are routed around," Shiloh replied, shifting to grip his forearm. "I have no idea where the one for this area would be though."

"We need to find it, we can't fight in total darkness."

"I'm not sure what you want me to do-" She paused and shook his hand off her arm, then slipped her hand into his instead. "-I can try to get us back to where I know where I'm at, I think if I just keep in contact with the wall..."

He pressed himself against the wall to let her pass in front of him, then followed as she began to tug him along with her free hand trailing along the wall. "Do what you can, we've got to get the damn lights back on or we're sitting ducks."

"I agree."

Shiloh and even Engineer jumped a bit at the disembodied voice of Spy suddenly sounding right next to them. A second later and a thin beam of white light clicked on - Spy had a penlight, and he aimed it at the ground at their feet. "Let us move, and quickly. After you, Miss MacKenna."

* * *

Total darkness would have been a blessing had Zane any way of seeing in it himself; as it was, he quickly stumbled his way back through the door and slammed it behind him, leaning against it and trying to calm nerves that were already frazzled from the sudden appearance of those damned mercenaries on his doorstep.

Why had the lights gone out? Was it a total loss of power to this entire sector or was it merely the lights themselves?

Across the room he could make out a tiny sickly orange pinpoint of light: that was...what was that, the indicator that the emergency generator was engaged? He couldn't recall what he'd color-coded to what at the moment, but he was fairly certain that if he was seeing ANY sort of indicator light, it'd be for that.

So, a total loss of power then. And a total loss of power meant the machine was running in standby, with the generator providing just enough power to keep the transmitters and receivers online...

If he died his neural information would be transmitted and held, but he would not be resurrected until power was restored.

Moving carefully, focusing on putting one foot in front of the other without catching his toes on the ground (what WAS it about walking in total darkness that made a usually strong gait ungainly and clumsy? Surely visual imput wasn't THAT important to one's natural balance...) Zane headed for the little orange light; it seemed to take much longer than it should but at last he was leaning against a darkened panel of lights and small screens, the lone orange light the only bit of illumination to be had in the space.

He let his fingers trail over the panel, mouthing silently to himself what each little bump and ridge of lights, screens, and buttons represented, as much to give himself a focus for calm as to actually remind himself of each thing's function.

The generators he'd installed down here were supposed to be powering the transmitters and receivers, of course, but also the security measures he'd put in place as a sort of final, desperate gamble to keep unworthy hands off his machine, and...with the orange light being the only lit, that indicated the security measures weren't functioning.

How?

WHY?

Gauging by the shout he had heard the mercenaries were attempting to retreat from the tunnel, as unwilling to fight in the darkness as he was and as lacking in sources of light as well...he had time - not much, if his current luck was any indication - to find his way to the generators to check why they were only powering a fraction of what they should have been.


	17. Chapter 17

Fighting in the dark wasn't an option.

The entire team was rapidly moving back through the tunnels, toward where they knew lights still existed...but of course, that put them in the position of being back-lit - reduced to silhouettes for those men that were still left on their feet after Zane had flung those bricks at them.

Bullets fired from a variety of handguns were beginning to pepper the medic shield as they retreated.

"Anyone familiar with guerrilla warfare?" Gunther asked over the cacophony. "I suggest not getting lost."

* * *

With Spy following along invisibly somewhere behind or beside them, Engineer and Shiloh jogged through the tunnels; they'd backtracked to where the lights were still functioning and neither male had really questioned it when she'd briefly studied the pipes and wires visible on the ceiling and upper edges of the walls before moving off to their right.

As they moved she kept looking up to check those pipes, muttering to herself here and there. They'd been moving for several minutes when she pulled up short with a grumbled curse.

"What? What is it?"

Shiloh pointed up. "Some idiot marked these wrong, look-"

Engineer peered up, raising a hand to shield his eyes against the glare of the light; those pipes looked the same as ever, but then Spy dropped his cloak and aimed a penlight up there and what Engineer had thought was a seam was revealed to be a raised line of solder on the body of a pipe that wasn't quite straight - it was curved and the curve itself was pointing in the direction they'd just come from.

"How did you even notice that?" Spy asked quietly, sweeping the little circle of light up and down the pipes.

"Have to know what you're looking for," Shiloh answered quickly. "Anyway, those little curves show which direction the boxes are, and now suddenly this one is saying we have to go back the way we just came. That's not right."

"You didn't miss seeing one of those, did you?" Engineer asked, shifting to look behind them.

She shook her head. "Pretty sure I didn't, but-"

Spy held up a hand, hissing for them to be quiet.

The sounds of the gunfight they'd just retreated from were faint echoes at this point - still audible, but not overwhelming - and just noticeable over the sound of gunfire was a set of-

Well, wait a moment.

Spy had first picked out the sound of a single set of footsteps, moving toward them, but now it seemed there was another set coming at them from a different direction. "We are about to have company," he muttered, clicking his cloak on and turning the penlight off.

Engineer pulled Shiloh back against the wall then reached for his pistol; she pulled out the revolver she'd "borrowed" from one of Carmichal's disarmed men and pressed back into the wall behind her, closing her eyes and listening.

"Wait here," came Spy's whisper as he moved away.

Moments later the owner of the first set of footsteps appeared: Sniper came from around the corner, mouth opening to say something but snapping shut again when Engineer and Shiloh both shot him looks and gestured for quiet. He moved to slip in against one of the brick supports, giving them an inquiring and annoyed look but remaining silent.

The area where they huddled was a decently lit, long, and straight tunnel that had a few locked doors ahead and on the right side, and twenty feet ahead of them were a pair of yawning openings on either side where another tunnel intersected theirs. That second set of footsteps was growing louder - even Sniper could hear it now and he was leaning forward, eyes narrowed, looking for the source.

In that open space of the intersection between the four tunnels there came the sudden, sharp sound of something solid striking flesh, followed by a surprised grunt of pain.

Two flickering spots appeared, similar in how heat waves appeared, moments before Spy and a second figure abruptly decloaked: Spy had struck the other, breaking both cloaks, and the attacked was-

Carmichal. He was shaking his head, Spy had struck him with the butt of his revolver, and came into view quickly as the cloak he wore fell away at the strike. In one hand he had a large briefcase, in the other was his own gun that was already moving to aim and fire into Spy's knee-

"-YOU!"

Shiloh sharp shout made Carmichal's attention dart in her direction, the barest of hesitations that allowed Spy to sidestep and shoot; Carmichal jerked back as a hole appeared in his shoulder, then he staggered and backpedaled to duck into the tunnel opening on the left side, out of the view of Shiloh and the others, but still well within Spy's own view. The Frenchman, in one fluid motion, snapped his cloak back on and was sprinting after the man as he faded from view.

"I think we know who shut the power off," Engineer grunted, pushing himself away from the wall and hurrying down to the tunnel intersection.

Sniper was moving as well, but quickly skidded to a halt in front of the tunnel that Carmichal and Spy had just disappeared down. "I'll back up Spy, you get the lights back on." He then jabbed a finger in the air at Shiloh. "And YOU stay here, you hear me?"

Before she could respond he was running down the tunnel as well; she huffed out a sharp breath, grinding her teeth together. "You'd better put a bullet in him for me, then..."

Engineer jerked his head toward the opening Carmichal had come from. "Well, you heard the man - move 'em out."

She raised an eyebrow. "I did hear him, he told me to stay put."

Engineer grinned a bit at her. "I might need your hands, remember?"

* * *

With his target invisible ahead of him Spy was reduced to 'tracking' him by the sound of his pounding feet, following the man on a crazed and meandering route through the tunnel system - fifteen seconds into the chase he had immediately lost track of where he was in relation to where he'd just come from, and hoped that Carmichal was actually heading somewhere rather than blindly running from his pursuers.

Had he not had years of picking out the wavering, barely perceptible specter of his Blu counterpart amongst the chaos of their battles Spy likely would not have spotted Carmichal coming toward them; the audible footsteps had at least helped narrow down the approximate space the cloaked man was occupying.

At first Spy had considered shooting the man (again) to slow him down, but after a moment's thought he decided to wait: Carmichal was supposed to be some normal grey-collar worker who happened to head a security crew. Having to rely on where he imagined Carmichal to be rather than actual, visual confirmation bore the risk of some freak accident occurring that would kill the man, and Spy was very, very interested in learning how Carmichal had gotten his hands on a cloaking device. VERY interested.

Of course, the answer to that question could be as mundane as "Zane supplied him with one" but...given how this little adventure had been going so far, Spy suspected that for once the simplest answer was not the correct one.

And several minutes later it seemed he would be given a chance to indulge in his curiosity.

The chase Carmichal had led him on ended in a circular room, one third of it fenced in and stocked with what looked like plumbing supplies and tools. There was the tunnel that led in here, a door on the far wall, and a door eight feet to the right of that one. Spy stopped and stood just off-center in the tunnel that led into the room and waited; Carmichal was still cloaked but the moment he tried to leave, either back the way he'd come or through one of the doors, Spy would immediately know his location and the few seconds it'd take for Carmichal to open and get through a door would be enough of a pause for Spy to close the distance and nab him.

For several tense moments there was nothing but silence but then one of the doorknobs faintly rattled, and Spy smiled.

"I am willing to negotiate," he said into the "empty" room, "providing you are willing to cooperate. You may yet walk out of here alive despite your choice in employers."

Again there was a stretch of silence, then "you already had your one."

"My one what?"

"Your one. One freebie where I don't kill you."

Spy chuckled. "And what makes you think you have any chance at killing me? You tipped your hand in the alleyway, you will not get a chance to disable me again."

"I know how you move, how you fight. I know your skills...it's really in your best interest to walk away right now. I have a mission to complete and you are not a part of it - I do not have the time or inclination to play with you."

Spy frowned; Carmichal's voice was deepening, his speech pattern and accent changing - it was as though Carmichal was speaking while a disguise kit was initiating. "I have questions I would like answered, you do not have to die."

"You are not one to leave loose ends," came the reply, Carmichal's voice now entirely gone and replaced with one that was distinctly familiar. "You insult my intelligence by trying to convince me otherwise."

"You..." Spy growled softly.

* * *

"I smell something shorted...wherever this dang box of yours is, it's got to be close."

Shiloh nodded, nose wrinkling. "I guess, but when you put it like that..."

Engineer blew out a sigh, nodding as well. "Yeah, I'm not exactly hopeful either, but we'll have to see."

Going back the way Carmichal had come was leading them back into the darkened areas - Engineer wished that he'd thought to ask Spy to leave his penlight now - and the further in they moved the more apparent the smell became. It was acrid, burnt...like something had melted, and being as they were looking for a fuse box of some sort he was steadily becoming less hopeful about getting the lights back on in a timely manner, if at all.

They were jogging along, ears straining for any hint of an approaching enemy, squinting into the ever-dimming light; though there didn't seem to be a soul around Engineer still had the distinct feeling they were being hunted - the fact that they hadn't encountered anyone and couldn't hear the gunfight they'd left felt more like a bad thing than anything else, and he was growing more tense by the second as they continued on.

Minutes later they came to a stop in a doorway, Shiloh resting a hand on the wall and peering ahead into the dark.

"I have no idea where we are and I can't see anymore," she said after a moment, glancing over to him.

He could just barely see her face in the gloom. "Fair enough. I still smell something burnt but I can't track it down with my nose alone. Should have asked Spy to leave his light...did you see any more of those markings on the pipes?"

"I was looking for them until it got too dark-"

She was abruptly cut off as her head suddenly snapped back, a spray of blood blasting from busted lips as she jerked again with a second unseen blow that blasted all the air from her and knocked her clean off her feet; she hit the ground hard flat on her back and stayed there - she didn't move to curl up to protect herself, she just laid there stunned, and then whatever had hit her struck at Engineer.

Years of honed instinct had him ducking even though he couldn't clearly see the blow coming for him; whatever it was managed to still graze him, sending a searing, sharp pain from just above his right eyebrow to the top of his skull as he dropped to his knees and partly rolled away. He went to draw his pistol - he rammed the stump of his wrist uselessly into his belt until his brain caught up to the movement and he swapped to his left hand, grabbing his gun and staring up grimly as, not three feet away, that damned Spybot decloaked fully, becoming more than just a blur in the dark swinging for him.

The bot had its own weapon out and trained on him; this close, even in the poor lighting, Engineer could make out several pointed, screw-like objects jutting from the bottom of the gun's grip - good gravy, no wonder just getting grazed had hurt like hell.

Half expecting the bot to open fire Engineer threw himself to the side again, coming up in a roll with the gun in his left hand braced against his right forearm to try and help steady his aim; in the ambient light coming from the Spybot's glowing eyes he could just make out the glint of the robot's gun moving as the bot aimed at Shiloh's prone form rather than continue to track him.

Engineer froze.

"Enough," the robot droned. "Lower your weapon."

"Get away from her you damned rust bucket," Engineer growled. "Or you so worried about a maimed man that you have to hide behind threatening a woman?"

"It is the quickest way to achieve my goal."

"...what do you want?" Engineer asked into the pause that followed.

The bot's eyes blinked briefly. "My master's backup generators were sabotaged. I am not programmed to repair them and I have a target to seek. I will show you to the generators and you will get them running...or I will kill this woman, then take you to the generators anyway."

"And if I do you'll leave us be?"

"Affirmative. At least until I am ordered otherwise. You are not my priority right now."

Using his stump he 'felt' around until he found the wall behind him, then slowly hauled himself to his feet, eyes never leaving the Spybot; it waited calmly for him to stand, its gun still aimed at Shiloh.

Engineer glanced down at her; she seemed to be coming to her senses, groaning and starting to stir - her face from the nose down was a mess of blood and he grimaced a bit thinking at what kind of damage the butt of that gun had done to her (if that was what had hit her, anyway).

"Move," the Spybot ordered, gesturing with its free hand toward the darkness.

"Move where? I can't see a dang thing passed this point."

In response there was a soft click and the bot's eyes flashed; twin circles of light, a muted yellow glow, now emanated from the robot's eyes - the sudden brightness made Engineer's eyes water and it took a moment to adjust to the change in light levels.

"Stay within the circles of light. Make no sudden movements, and drop your weapon."

"What about her?" Engineer very carefully bent to set his pistol on the ground at his feet, blinking as the robot looked directly at him and subsequently blinded him.

"She remains. Consider it an incentive to work quickly so that you may return before someone else finds her."

Damn it...

Seeing little other choice in the matter - and the robot's goals were basically the same as his anyway, providing these generators were tied in to the main power down here - Engineer turned and began to slowly move away, keeping his boots planted more or less in the middle of the circles of light the robot provided.

It was awkward to navigate like this: every time the robot turned its head, even if just a fraction, the light moved and Engineer paused until it swung back to guiding him.

The acrid smell they'd been "following" until encountering the Spybot was growing stronger so there was at least that...and aside from a few turns it was mostly a straight shot to the generators the Spybot wanted turned on.

They were both about the size of his truck and inside their own vented room that was free of the burnt smell, instead smelling heavily of something similar to diesel fuel.

"You're going to have to look where I tell you, if your face is the only source of light we've got in here," Engineer said after a moment.

"Acknowledged."

With the unease of having the robot at his back it took him a few minutes longer than it normally would have to give both generators a quick once-over, but when he got around to the opposite side of the second generator he immediately located the issue (as well as the source of the fuel smell).

"There's your problem," he said, gesturing down to the floor. At his feet was a thick cable with several bullet-sized holes in it, leaking a viscous fluid that was slowly draining into a grate set into the floor. "Fuel line to this one is damaged, I'm willing to bet there's safeties in place to keep them both from starting up and blowing this place sky high."

"Can it be repaired?"

"Not without draining off the fuel, venting the fumes, and replacing that line there - none of which I'm able to do without the proper tools, and it'd take time besides. Speaking of fumes, I suggest we hightail it out of here before something in you sparks and sets this place off."

"This was a waste of my time then."

"Did you even look in here before going to find someone else?" Engineer asked, despite a little voice in his head telling him that it was a bad idea to provoke the robot.

"I was occupied with other concerns at the time," came the robot's curt reply.

It shut off its eyes, plunging Engineer back into total darkness; he immediately reached out for something, anything, to give him some sort of anchor and orientation within the room and as his hand found the corner of the nearest generator he could hear the robot's retreating steps, followed by silence.

Damn it.

* * *

"Two locked doors before you, and I blocking your route behind you. How many times have we found ourselves in this little predicament?"

Spy slowly paced back and forth in the doorway, his revolver trained on his target.

Starting from the top of his head, "Carmichal's" appearance melted away; a familiar masked face took its place, and in lieu of the blue suit he once wore he now sported a black one with charcoal gray pin-striping.

"It is not a dance I have time to repeat," Javier growled. "You have already expended your one 'get out of death free' chance I was willing to afford you...you are not my target or a part of my mission in any way, step aside and leave me be or I will not hesitate to kill you."

"Is that the threat of a desperate man?" Spy asked, smirking. "You were never one to try and talk your way out of an encounter."

"That is the promise of a man on a schedule. Move."

"Indulge my curiosity - why are you playing the part of Carmichal?"

Javier's face twisted in annoyance. "I owe you nothing, least of all free information."

Spy spread his hands in a 'what can you do' sort of gesture but remained silent, waiting.

Javier's expression steadily soured. "Move. Now."

"Kill me," Spy said simply. "I am in your way, after all." He glanced to the case in Javier's hand - he had no idea what might be in it but it was larger than one would need if he were merely smuggling documents. "You always were one to solve all issues with a blade."

Lips pressing together into a thin line, Javier abruptly cloaked. "I will leave my pursuer to deal with you, then."

Almost on cue there were a series of gunshots from the tunnel behind him: three shots were higher pitched, two were deeper and spoke of a round that packed a bigger punch. Frowning, Spy cloaked and moved down the tunnel several yards before moving to stand near the wall - he would have to listen for his ex-Blu counterpart's attempt to slip by him as well as now determine what the hell was coming toward him.

Then, a third distinctly different gunshot sounded; three different guns firing, and it was anyone's guess as to who they belonged to. If Spy had to guess he would assume at least one of them belonged to either Miss MacKenna or Engineer, as he had left them behind, and if they were firing it meant they were now under attack.

That was troublesome...ordinarily he'd leave his teammates to take care of themselves but Engineer's confidence in himself had been shaken with the loss of his hand - depending on him in a gunfight might not be the best of ideas.

But then again...Spy thought to the case Javier had. It was not like the man to try and talk his way out of anything - Spy had not been kidding when he'd said Javier solved all problems with the end of a blade - and that made him suspicious of what the man carried...especially considering the revelation that Javier had been masquerading as Carmichal in Zane's service for God knew how long, and nothing that came from that madman could be considered good news.

"I think my team has your pursuer well in hand," he said into the silence, turning to stride back toward the room where Javier lurked, cloaked. "They will at least delay long enough to allow us to complete our business here."

"And this is why I never attempt to negotiate," came Javier's quiet reply - it sounded as though he was still over by the locked door.

Spy reached into his jacket to remove his knife from an inner pocket, flicking it open with practiced ease; blade in one hand and gun in the other, he edged into the room. It had been awhile since he'd had anyone of skill to stalk.


	18. Chapter 18

They'd retreated, regrouped, and waited for the dust to die down...then, Pyro lit a flare and flung it back the way they'd come, filling the tunnel with a reddish flickering light. It wasn't much - not at first, anyway.

Pyro typically carried a good supply of flares, lighters, and various other flammable items on his person, and while the light of a single flare didn't do much more than cast odd shadows everywhere, the next three flares began to more fully illuminate the area - specifically, it was starting to reveal where the men that made up Zane's security had crept to.

They made for easy targets to pick off, seeming surprised at the sudden appearance of the flares and not having anywhere to go as the flares kept coming; one could only assume that they'd moved to try and track the mercenaries in the dark, a spectacularly bad idea in hindsight - perhaps they'd overheard Gunther's remark on guerrilla warfare and had taken him seriously, or maybe they'd honestly thought they'd stood a chance.

Whatever the reason it didn't take the mercs long to round up the survivors, disarm them, patch them up enough that no one would bleed out, and then they left them under Soldier's guard as the rest of the team headed for the door Zane had disappeared through, Pyro gathering his flares as they went.

After an onslaught of shotgun blasts fired point blank to the door frame at the hinges and doorknob, Heavy was then able to simply rip the door free and push it aside; Pyro stepped up and began to lob the flares through the doorway around him, varying their arc and distance to light up the immediate area beyond the door.

They stepped through the opening and spread out, eyes squinting in the gloom.

"Knock knock, you snake," Demo growled into the silence. "Won't be cheating death this time."

* * *

Her head swam as she used the wall to leverage herself into a sitting position, leaning back against it with a cough that immediately set her eyes watering again; whatever had hit her had come out of nowhere and the first blow to her face had caught her between her upper lip and just beneath her nose. She gingerly wiped her nose down the back of her hand and up her arm, leaving a huge bloody streak behind and wincing as her face throbbed...at least it seemed like her teeth were still intact, so that was a good sign.

In addition to the battered nose her ribs were killing her and she had what felt like a stitch in her side, dissuading her from attempting to stand up for the moment and leaving her simply focusing on the simple acts of inhaling and exhaling, waiting for the stitch to ease up before lifting a hand to her face to fully assess the damage; her fingertips encountered a deep cut under her nose that started at the septum and traced a short line up toward her left cheek bone. Whatever had hit her had hit her hard, but left her alive...why? She'd clearly been left senseless in the floor for...well, god knows how long at this point. Anything could have finished her off and yet here she was, bloodied and hurting, but still breathing.

It was puzzling, but her thought process stalled when she suddenly realized she was alone.

"Dell?" At first it was hardly more than a ragged whisper and she coughed again, tasting blood in her throat; there was no sign of the man nearby, no sign of where he might have gone either. "Dell?"

The silence pressed in and she swallowed, still tasting blood, but the quiet didn't last long - her hand went for her revolver as she heard the sound of running feet coming closer.

To his credit Sniper didn't even seemed fazed when he came into view and saw Shiloh had her gun trained on him, instead skidding to a stop and staring down at her.

"I hate it when I'm right."

"Aren't you supposed to be helping Spy?"

He bent down to grab her arm and help her to her feet. "I was going to, then I remembered how you attract trouble like a bloody magnet."

She grunted and reached out a hand to steady herself against the wall, sniffing as her nose began to drip. "Did you see Dell on the way here?"

"No. What the hell happened? Why isn't he with you?"

Shaking her head Shiloh shrugged his hand off her arm and glanced up and down the tunnel. "Something hit me and I just woke up in the floor...I'm not su- son of a bitch, Zane has a Spybot left, it had to have been that."

Sniper grit his teeth. "A Spybot. In the dark. Fan-bloody-tastic."

Shiloh ground her teeth together, gripping her gun tightly and beginning to peer a bit more closely at the darkness further down the tunnel. "...it had to have been it, I didn't see anything before I got hit...but why'd it leave me in the floor and take Dell?"

"Don't know, ain't worried about it right now," Sniper grunted. He too was starting to eye the darkened tunnel ahead of them. "Did you two find where to get the lights on?" She shook her head and he swore quietly under his breath. "...much as I want to find our Engineer I'm not counting our chances to be very good if we have to tangle with a Spybot in the dark."

"They aren't."

From about ten feet away there was a series of muzzle flashes and a trio of loud bangs that announced the de-cloaking Spybot's presence much more efficiently than the robot's smug taunt had; Sniper jerked three times then dropped with a pained noise and a grunt, his shirt already darkening with blood from the three shots that had hit him in the stomach and chest. He landed flat on his back on the floor, Shiloh's attention strangely drawn to the sight of his hat falling off his head as he hit.

"MUNDY!"

"Always...bloody Spybots..." the Australian groaned, his breath coming in fits and starts.

A fourth shot that whinged by Shiloh's shoulder brought her crashing back to reality and she stumbled away, hearing a fifth shot and a pained cry from Sniper; turning around she saw the Spybot had shot him again, the man's hand outstretched toward the rifle next to him now with a fresh bullet hole through the palm.

"Stay down, mercenary," the robot ordered, stepping over him and locking its gaze on Shiloh. "Where is the other?"

Shiloh snapped her revolver up and fired, the Spybot hardly seeming to notice the round striking it and leaving only a small dent as it ricocheted into the ceiling. "Damn it!"

"Where is the other? Do not make me repeat myself again."

"Just go away!" she shouted at it, backpedaling. "What other? What did you do with Dell?"

"There was a man fleeing," the robot continued, its pace quickening to try and close the distance between it and the woman. "He had a case with him. Where is he?"

"Nowhere you need to worry about you sorry son of a bitch!"

The sound of Sniper's rifle firing in the tunnel was deafening; the Spybot jerked and arched its back with an electronic squeal, nearly losing its footing before seconds later cloaking as an oily smell wafted through the tunnel.

With the Spybot invisible Shiloh could see beyond it to where Engineer stood with Sniper's rifle balanced awkwardly on his right forearm, his left hand wrapped around the trigger guard; he was lowering the gun, unable to work the bolt without his right hand, and was wearing a look of outright murder as he began to storm forward to where the robot had disappeared.

Shiloh grunted as she was abruptly shoved aside and slammed into the wall, the clanking of the robot's retreat just barely heard over the ringing in her ears.

"You all right there, Shiloh?" Engineer was already kneeling by the injured Australian and Shiloh hurried over to drop to her knees next to him. Even in the gloom Sniper looked pale and he had a hand pressed to the ever-widening blood stain on his chest, just off-center of his sternum on the right side.

"Damn it," Engineer muttered, looking him over. "Lung, maybe - stomach definitely. We need to get him to Medic and quick-like."

"Where were you?" Shiloh asked, lightly resting her hand on Sniper's shoulder. She looked between Sniper and the tunnel behind them, expression uneasy.

"That thing dragged me off to a room with some busted generators then left me in the dark. I ran into three walls and a door trying to follow where I thought its footsteps were going, then finally remembered which way I'd come."

She glanced down at Sniper. "Can you carry him?"

"Well yeah...what the hell are you thinking now?" Engineer asked, his tone tinged with suspicion.

"That thing was chasing Carmichal before it got me and you," she said in a rush. "And Spy-"

"-went after Carmichal, and has no idea he's got a Spybot coming to join the party," Engineer finished, sounding grim. "We can't help both unless we split up. Take Sniper and-"

"-no, no way," Shiloh interrupted. "If you get Sniper to Medic you can get some help getting the power back on. I'll go warn Spy."

Engineer simply stared at her a moment. "Are you insane?"

She began pawing at Sniper's belt, feeling around until she could unclip the ammo case there, then she pulled the loose rounds out of the pocket of his vest. "All I have to do is warn him, maybe keep the thing busy."

He reached out to snag the rifle's stock as she went to pick it up. "Would you stop and think about this a moment?! How are you even going to find Spy down here? We don't know where he went!"

With a grunt she yanked the gun free of his grasp and hefted it. "Be careful going back. ...don't die on me, Mundy."

Before Engineer could protest further she was up and sprinting away, trailing after the damaged Spybot; he stared after her even as he helped Sniper sit up so he could help him to his feet. "...reckless streak the size of Texas," Engineer muttered, wrapping his right arm around Sniper's waist to help keep him upright - Shiloh wasn't quite as tall as Sniper or as gangly so carrying her hadn't been too awkward. Sniper on the other hand...

"S'why I...came back..." Sniper grunted after a pause. "Attracts trouble...remembered who I was talking to." With Engineer's help they began to hobble quickly back toward where they'd left the others.

And it was a tense and hurried walk back; they found Soldier and Scout watching Zane's defeated men and a flickering red light coming through the doorway that Zane had retreated through. Engineer left Sniper with Soldier before moving to carefully edge into the room, skirting around the flares and managing to locate-

The rest of the team was standing in a loose circle near a cluster of flares, the entire room stinking of gunpowder, smoke, and blood, and as Engineer moved closer he could make out the pale glow of the mediguns activating and patching everyone up.

He stumbled a bit in a divot in the floor - something heavy must have gouged the concrete - but within a few moments he was shouldering up between Demo and Heavy, and staring into the middle of their little circle where their latest captive was laying in a crumpled heap.

"Would you look at that," Engineer chuckled, crossing his arms. "One of you Medics needs to get outside to Sniper, I left him with Soldier and he's needing some help." Gunther broke away from the group and rushed off and Engineer studied Zane's battered form, grinning a bit as the man weakly shifted - he was almost face-down on the floor, and Pyro had a boot planted solidly on one of Zane's arms as well as had his shotgun trained on the back of his head. He would not get far if he attempted to get up, and Engineer found himself wishing he could see a bit better to gauge how big of an ass kicking they'd-

Well, there'd be time to enjoy the bloodshed later.

"All right fellas, Shiloh went after Spy and a Spybot - we need to get the lights on and give her and Spy a hand. Truss this bastard up and we can deal with him later."

Engineer spun on a heel to hurry back toward the door and nearly collided with the younger man that had been up in that Madam's room, having forgotten he was even down here with them - he was nearly impossible to see in the gloom as everything on him was black, but he moved to purposely step into Engineer's path when Engineer went to move around him.

"What is needed?" he asked.

An idea struck him. "Look, you know your way around down here, right?" Engineer asked, the man nodding at him. "Where's the damn fuse or junction box?"

"I will show you."

"Thanks. What's your name again?"

"Yuri. Follow."

By the time they'd gotten back out of the room Sniper was already back on his feet and fell in behind Engineer as they rushed off into the tunnels again, Gunther not far behind them.

"What's the plan?" Sniper asked.

"Yuri's going to show me where the fuse box is," Engineer replied. "You two can break off and go find Shiloh, she and Spy are going to need help."

Sniper grunted and ran a few seconds in silence. "...either of you got a spare gun on you? She ran off with my bloody rifle, I'm down to my blade and that's it."

Engineer fumbled his pistol off his belt and awkwardly handed it off while they jogged along, offering him the ammo case as well. Sniper took both, looking less than pleased at the weapon but clipping the case to his belt anyway.

When they reached where they'd initially split up Sniper and Gunther broke off and disappeared down a side tunnel while Engineer followed Yuri straight ahead. As he ran, Engineer really, really hoped they'd catch up to Shiloh before something bad happened...though there was something grudgingly admirable about her particular kind of crazy.

* * *

It was impossible to really know how far away Spy was in relation to the Spybot Shiloh was pursuing - she had no idea where he had gone when he'd broken away to chase after Carmichal, but the Spybot seemed to know where it was going as it did not hesitate in its choice of path, nor did it seem concerned that she was following it or that it was easy enough to do so: the Spybot was leaking something oily - that single shot Engineer had punched through its back was enough for it to leave a splattered trail in its wake.

When that trail stopped suddenly she skidded to a halt and instinctively ducked, hearing the whistle of something passing by overhead. Taking a few steps backward Shiloh raised the rifle but didn't fire - her ammo was limited and the Spybot was still-

It de-cloaked and squared off against her, a pistol in one hand and its blade in the other, but still she didn't fire. "If you persist in pursuing I will have little choice but to eliminate you."

"Then do it," she grunted, jumping back as it swung the knife again. "Don't threaten, follow through."

"My master would prefer to kill you himself, I would rather not be forced to make a choice between punishment and efficiency."

It lunged forward and jabbed at her; she sidestepped again but it still sliced into her forearm - not deeply, but being hit at all was not a good thing.

"Then I guess you can't eliminate me."

She backpedaled rapidly as she spoke, the words fading into a stuttering hiss as she blew out a small bit of breath at every narrow miss as the Spybot swung and moved toward her rapidly and repeatedly; one thrust of the blade she managed to deflect with the stock of the rifle, using the momentum to shift to the side and roll up the tunnel along the wall, panting. Now she was between the robot and where it was trying to go; her eyes were drawn to the glint of the blade as the bot flicked the knife shut and stuck it to its hip.

"You are very stupid."

Its pistol was up faster than she could track; the first shot ruffled her hair near her ear and she dove for the wall as the robot fired two more times.

"I agree," she panted, ducking and finally firing at the robot. She missed but just barely, and the robot still flinched away even as she was slotting in a new round for a second shot that scraped the bot's shoulder. "But, I can count."

The robot ducked to the side, raised its pistol, and pulled the trigger. The resulting click was unusually loud.

"Eight," she grunted, slamming a third round into the rifle. Her shot was delayed as she got her thumb caught in the breech and the Spybot was already moving, dodging to the side and rushing forward to close the gap between them-

From somewhere behind the Spybot a shot rang out; the robot stiffened and spun around, one of its legs dragging, the hole in its back a bit wider and now sparking. Shiloh aimed for it and fired as whatever had struck the robot and caused it to turn around began to pepper its front with bullets.

Before she could eject and then reload one of the shots coming from in front of the robot clipped the bot and struck her in the right shoulder; she let out a pained noise and let the butt of the rifle droop, clamping it under her arm against her side - the recoil from firing it would hurt like hell if she braced it against her shoulder now, but whoever was on the other side of that Spybot (and there was more than one gun firing, she realized) was doing a good job of distracting it, allowing her to slink toward the wall. Maybe if she braced the butt against the wall-

Suddenly Sniper was dodging around the twitching robot, letting a pistol drop to the floor as he ripped the rifle out of her hands, raising it and firing; the top of the robot's head burst open and it dropped to its knees with a buzzing noise. The other firing stopped and over the Spybot's head she could see Gunther dropping an emptied magazine to the ground and slipping a new one into the gun in his hand.

She fumbled the rest of the ammo she had into Sniper's waiting hand and he reloaded, fired again, reloaded once more and fired a final time, scattering the robot's remains across the tunnel floor.

For a moment afterward the only sounds were the three of them panting, then Shiloh slowly slid down the wall with a grimace. "...all right, which of you jerks shot me?"

Gunther let out a breathy bark of laughter. "Who shot you does not matter, because I will fix it anyway." He came over and swapped the pistol in his hand for the medigun strapped to his back and turned it on her.

All three of them paused and turned at a sudden, single shot that came from the tunnel ahead of them.


	19. Chapter 19

When Sniper came jogging into the room, winded and with his rifle resting in the crook of an arm, the first thing he saw was the sprawled body of a man face-down in the floor with a pistol and a knife not far from it.

The body had on a dark suit, and...of all things, a mask. But it wasn't Spy - the suit and mask were the wrong color, and Carmichal hadn't had a mask on...

He next noted the spreading pool of blood under the dead man, and the visible exit wound on the man's back - he'd been killed in one clean shot it seemed, and only moments ago they had heard a single shot echoing through the tunnel, meaning the man hadn't been dead for long at all.

And then next he heard the familiar click of Spy's lighter opening, and turned to see the Frenchman sitting against the wall to the immediate right of the entryway Sniper had come through; the hand holding the lighter was shaking as it was lifted toward the cigarette hanging loosely from the man's lips, and Spy grunted in greeting as he stared up at the Australian.

He was a bit of a mess: there was a long gash that started above his left eye, crossed the bridge of his nose, and continued on back almost to his right ear. His suit jacket had rips in it, some of which appeared to be stab wounds that had done more than just tear the fabric, and Spy's left arm had a visibly spreading blood stain where the sleeve met the shoulder seam; that arm was resting limply on a large case sitting in the floor beside him, and based on the trail of blood smears Spy had dragged it from beside the dead man.

"Looks like he did a bloody number on you," Sniper finally said as Shiloh, followed by Gunther, came into the room. "Who was it? Where's Carmichal?"

Spy smiled weakly, pausing in lighting the cigarette. "...his wrist, check his wrist for me. The...right one, I believe." He went silent as Shiloh knelt beside him, and Gunther stood over him readying the medigun, sighing in quiet relief as the gun began to do its work.

Sniper shook his head and turned back toward the corpse, stomping over to pull the right sleeve up. "...you've got to be bloody joking."

Spy carefully leaned just enough to see around Gunther's legs as Sniper held the corpse's arm up for them to see - clamped to the man's arm was one of the prototype cloaking devices.

After a moment Spy simply nodded and leaned back. "I suspected as much...I knew he had to be in possession of something out of the ordinary." As his wounds began to close Spy began to look a lot livelier, flexing the fingers on his left hand and carefully easing his mask off. "If you are in the mood for surprises, why don't you roll him onto his back and take a look at his face."

Sniper stood and used his foot to roughly roll the corpse over, then swore quietly.

Javier didn't appear to have fared any better than Spy (though it was hard to tell as he'd been soaking in a sizable puddle of his own blood for several minutes) but his lifeless eyes stared up at the ceiling, his mouth slightly agape.

"Shit..." Shiloh whispered quietly. She turned wide eyes to Spy. "That's- ...that WAS-"

When she cut off abruptly Spy simply nodded, and she ground her teeth together as she turned her gaze back to the corpse.

"We engaged like we have so many times before," Spy said into the silence that followed. "This time differed in that his cloak was superior to mine...I sincerely doubt Zane would have given such a device to 'Carmichal' so I imagine that one to be stolen."

"Why is he here?" Shiloh asked, clenching and unclenching fists. "That's - I mean, that IS Javier right? I'm not just imagining it?"

"That is him, you are correct. As for why he is here-" Spy drummed fingers against the case at his side. "I have yet to determine that." For several breaths he simply stared down at the case under his hand, lips pressed together into a thin line, then he blinked and looked up at Shiloh again. "...might I ask why you are covered in blood and also absent of the company of our Engineer?"

With a sniff Shiloh rubbed her nose and upper lip against her shirt sleeve, smearing off some of the congealing blood still clinging to her. "There was a-"

"-she tried taking on a Spybot by herself," Sniper interrupted, tone dry.

"-a Spybot coming after Carmichal," Shiloh went on, raising her voice over Sniper's, shooting him a look and then all but ignoring him as he scowled at her, "and I was coming to warn you. If I hadn't it would have been a three-way Spy showdown in here and you - ...and I guess Javier too - wouldn't have known it was coming or here until someone got murdered."

"...while I am grateful you thought of my well-being, do you completely lack sense or did that blow to your head knock a few things loose?" Spy asked after a pause, gesturing with his hand at the blood on her face with disapproving scowl before slipping his lighter back into his jacket only to pull a handkerchief free and offer it to her.

She went to take it when Spy tightened his grip on it, preventing her from pulling it from his hands; on one of the corners was a cut in the fabric framed by a sizable bloodstain - his, not hers.

"Um, the thought was appreciated anyway?" she offered into the pause.

Spy closed his eyes, inhaled and exhaled slowly, then let out an exasperated little snort of laughter, shaking his head and stuffing the handkerchief back into a pocket. "Did we get our target?"

"Don't know, didn't ask," Sniper replied. "Was a bit preoccupied at the time but the fight sounded over with so either we got him, he got away, or the rest of the team's dead."

Gunther shut off the medigun and hung it from a hook on the side of the pack on his back. "It is over with, Zane has been captured and his men neutralized."

Spy nodded his thanks to the medic and gracefully rose to his feet, the case held at his side and his free hand offered to help Shiloh up. "Let us regroup then - we are done here."

Shiloh looked between him and Javier's corpse, taking his hand long enough to stand. "...we're just leaving him here?"

"It is not my job to dispose of corpses," Spy said, stepping around her and heading for the tunnels. "Men in my line of work do not receive proper burials and are not mourned."

"That's...kind of cold."

"The world is a cold place, Miss MacKenna, especially when you refuse to connect with it. He cared for nothing but his missions, his reputation, and his money, he bore no loyalty to anyone but himself, and no one will care that he is gone."

Sniper and Gunther jogged the few steps to draw even with them and together the four left the room, trudging through the tunnels silently.

* * *

The trip back to the others seemed a lot shorter when the lights were back on, and it wasn't long before Engineer found they'd all retreated to a small room that overlooked the larger one he'd left them in; this room looked to be a control room of some sort, full of panels and computers and screens, and he wasn't at all surprised to see that the room below them housed a giant machine - that had to be that damned immortality machine that had seemed so impossible when he and Medic had been trying to make sense of Zane's journals.

The machine in question had probably looked a lot more impressive before they'd clashed - there were parts of it that were torn off and strewn around the room, scrapes and craters dotted the concrete floor, and three sets of glass doors on the machine's front were shattered and the metal around it pockmarked with buckshot and bullet holes.

Medic was down there right now in front of the shattered doors that were furthest to the right, examining a metal trunk that from here looked to be riveted and sealed shut; a fine mist curled around the German's ankles as he moved - it brought to mind the icy fog that came out of a freezer, and Engineer then had the sudden realization of what had to be in that trunk and wrinkled his nose in mild disgust, wondering what little towns had been slaughtered for this second collection of specimens.

And speaking of specimens...

His team had Zane tied to a chair, stripped down to his undershirt, pants, and shoes, with his belongings in a heap in the floor beneath the room's sole stand-alone desk. They still stood in a tight circle around him, awaiting word back from Miss Pauling on whether they should execute him outright or if the Administrator had other..."plans" for the man.

Before going down to examine the machine Medic had at least mended the man up enough that he wouldn't bleed out (or at least, not for several hours - Engineer wasn't exactly well-versed in blood clotting and similar variables that would effect how fast someone would bleed to death). For the most part Zane had only sat there silently swaying in the chair, unable to fall over but not quite able to hold himself steady either, glaring balefully at them through his one eye that wasn't swollen shut.

But when he finally noticed Engineer standing there, his dazed look of pain twisted to one of pure hatred.

"You are fools." The words were hardly above a whisper, bloodied lips barely moving. "She'll turn on you when she is done...she'll ruin you as surely as she ruined me."

When no one else answered, Engineer moved a few steps closer and bent slightly, resting his hand on his knee. "Personal tragedy doesn't give you a free pass to murder, pardner. Not a man in this room that hasn't seen tragedy of some kind - difference between us and you is we don't kill unless we're paid to, and we definitely don't butcher our targets and stuff them in freezers either."

Zane sneered up at him, slowly tipping to one side before managing to pull himself upright. "I don't care how many you've killed or why. You blindly serve a murderer while the blood on my hands came from striving to push humanity forward technologically. I did not do it for money or fame...vengeance, perhaps, but it began as all things do: with noble purpose. A need to alleviate suffering...but one who spreads suffering obviously cannot grasp the concept of eradicating it."

Engineer couldn't help but roll his eyes at him. "Not even dignifying that one with a response because it's clear you ain't changing your mind - we're the bad guys no matter what I say or how I say it, right?"

"You are killers and filth, cowards and thieves."

Again Engineer rolled his eyes, crossing his arms and staring down at the man; even defeated, bleeding, and without hope, the man was still sounding off and spouting his own twisted little interpretation of everything he'd done...amazing. When he didn't reply Zane began ranting again, and Engineer found his gaze drifting down to the stump of his arm; there'd be so much to adjust to in the future if he couldn't make that mechanical hand-

-right, Shiloh had drawn that schematic up for him, and Zane had gone out of his way to hurt her too. Coward and a thief, huh? Ha, coming from the man who killed hundreds and tortured the two of them, maimed him...made a little hard, hot knot of anger form in his stomach thinking about it.

"-you know, Zane," he said then, still staring at his stump and thinking. "You cut my hand off because that's what they did to thieves in the old days, right? You know what else used to be an old law?"

"I'm amazed a beast like yourself even knows what a law is."

Engineer scratched his chin idly, then turned his head to look around at his team. "...Pyro, you got your axe - heh - handy?"


	20. Chapter 20

Even though night was beginning to fall it didn't seem like darkness would ever set in; the lights of Vegas were gaudy and bright and painfully artificial, and they erased any hope of seeing the stars emerge...Sniper was finding the longer he sat up here the more he quietly hated this town, and there was a part of him amazed that someone like Shiloh had spent years here and hadn't been ruined by it.

They sat up on the roof in wicker chairs, facing away from downtown Vegas to somewhat control the glare of the lights; the roof itself was softly lit by tiny white lights strung along poles that held up a gauzy fabric that formed a canopy over the tables and chairs that were up here. The roof was one of the more popular places for private parties and it was only because Alexei himself had closed the club for the night that the place was deserted and quiet.

Shiloh had cleaned herself up a bit, her face scrubbed even if her clothes were still blood-stained; she'd been quiet and he was content to sit in silence, knowing that if she wanted to talk she wo-

"You know...I always thought if I ended up back here, it'd be because I came back myself. I'm not sure I ought to be happy I'm here or not."

It took him a moment to decide how best to respond to that. "...seems the source of your misery got murdered in her own bed, that count for anything?"

She shrugged, inhaling and exhaling slowly through her nose. "Not sure it should - apparently that was Alexei's mother. That seems kind of wrong to be happy about that, you know? She might have been a miserable old hag but she was his mother."

"Blood doesn't make family, sheila. He picked you over her and she put him in that position." Sniper went quiet a moment, shifting in his chair to prop his feet up on the ledge that ran around the roof's edge. "How long you plan on avoiding him?"

Shiloh shot him a look. "I'm not avoiding him."

Sniper snorted. "You're up here instead of inside. You're avoiding him."

She glowered at him and pulled her legs up, wrapping arms around her knees and digging her heels into the edge of the chair. "All right...fine, maybe I am. I haven't seen him in ages, then I come back and he murders his mother to save my ass, what do I even say?"

"I'd start with hello."

"Oh my freaking-" she blew out an exasperated sigh, frowning when she caught sight of the smirk he was wearing. "Yeah, laugh it up. If you need me I'll be sitting here, imagining myself tossing you off the side."

"Nah, you wouldn't do that."

"Please, I know you can survive it if you slide down the guttering."

Another comfortable silence stretched between them and Sniper turned his attention to the sky, squinting in the hopes of catching sight of at least a single star. God, he hated this town...

"How did you stand living here?" he finally asked, dropping his gaze to the toes of his boots; Vegas's less popular but no less bright section of the city stretched out beyond his feet. Somewhere out there the actual desert began, somewhere with sky and empty horizon.

She snorted, turning her head to rest a cheek against her knees. "Not like I had a choice, but when I was here it was just...business as usual, it was life. It was something of a shock to get somewhere smaller, more quiet - at first the relative silence was killing me, I'd gotten so used to the constant noise of Vegas. The longer I was out though, the more I found I liked the quiet."

"This city is damn awful. No sky, all lights...nothing that's not got a bloody building on top of it."

She jerked her thumb idly over a shoulder. "There were some city parks off in that direction, and the further out from the center of town you get the more breathing room you'll find. It's just...hard to find it with the lights on."

"...you going to stay here?"

"I don't know, honestly," she replied. "There's no telling what your boss is going to decide."

He frowned heavily. "Do not let her bully you this time, negotiate - get something you'll be happy with."

She shrugged. "I would have been happy in Colorado if she hadn't pulled a fast one on me, waiting until I'd agreed to everything before switching out my identity, my life...even my damn hair color."

"Black ain't your color, sheila."

"No, it's really not," she sighed, running fingers through her hair before tucking stray ends behind her ears. "And dying it is a pain, and it stinks, and it makes my hair fall out if I do it too frequently, but if I don't my natural color grows back in and I get a strip of it down the middle of my head. It's like being a reverse skunk...just such a stupid hassle, and all because your boss decided 'Anne Scholar' should have black hair."

He let out a very quiet chuckle. "That name doesn't suit you either." Slouching down in his chair he gently pushed away from the ledge with his feet, leaning the chair back on two legs. "I mean it though - do not let her push you around. You'll never get free if you don't take a firm stand against it."

"Free...pfft, I don't think I've ever been free. Knowing now that I've had a connection to your Administrator before I even knew all this nonsense existed - makes me wonder if she's kept an eye on me this entire time, not just when I happened to fall into her lap."

"Hard telling with her...easier to just assume she knows far more than she lets on, and you do your best to keep information out of her hands," Sniper snorted. "She can be reasoned with though, so don't let her banish you somewhere again."

"We'll see what happens, I guess. If I were the gambling sort I'd put money on her trying to pitch another job offer."

Sniper grunted in response and they both went quiet, watching the lights flicker and flash. Time ticked by and the night began to slowly cool off - they WERE in a desert, after all - and after a bit Sniper stirred from where he'd been almost dozing, patting at his pockets.

"Here, take this."

As Shiloh shifted to look over at him he pulled a folded slip of paper free from a back pocket and held it lightly between pointer and middle fingers, offering it toward her. She took it with a suspicious look, unfolding it as he brought his feet down off the ledge and leaned forward, hands on his knees.

"...and this is?" she asked after a pause.

He watched her eyes, seeing them flick back and forth as she read over the words on the paper. "Address, and two dead drop locations. The address is where my folks send letters and whatever else they choose to send - it ain't often, but it's the only permanent address I've got tied to me. The others - I don't get chances to check them too much, and it won't be quick, not by a long shot...but if you need to get word to me, use these."

Her gaze immediately moved to him, expression somewhere between confusion and surprise. "...really?"

"Considering how bloody easily you get into trouble it might not make a damn difference, but if you need it you have it." He grunted a bit as he pushed himself to his feet, moving toward the door. "We'll be heading out soon, should get my gun and be ready."

"...thanks, Mundy."

Sniper could hear the scuff of her boots on the ground, then the sounds of her footsteps following along behind him as he crossed the short distance to the door and tugged it open, stepping into the softly lit stairwell beyond it. They both plodded down the stairs and met Engineer halfway down; Sniper's quick glance back at Shiloh showed she'd put the little slip of paper away somewhere unseen - there was one less thing anyone would be questioning.

"Everything all right?" the Texan asked as the three traveled together down to the ground floor.

"Just peachy," Shiloh sighed as they stepped out of the stairwell. "Anyway, you guys be careful and try to stay in one piece, all right?"

Engineer chuckled. "I think we're the last ones that ought to be hearing that, but the thought is appreciated."

He clapped his hand onto her shoulder and she gave him a small smile in return, then slowed to fall back behind them as they approached the main lobby of the club. The only ones there were Spy, Pauling, and Scout, along with Alexei and Yuri standing at his side; Pauling's car was loaded with Zane and Javier's corpses, the remainders of the Spybot and Victor, and the case that Spy had recovered from Javier, and Shiloh could only assume the other mercs were outside waiting in the truck that had brought them all here. When their approach was noticed the little group turned to face them, Pauling breaking off to stride quickly toward them.

"Looks like this is it, then. Thanks for saving my ass...again..." Shiloh added after a moment.

"Try to stay out of trouble this time," Engineer chuckled, to which Shiloh snorted loudly.

"Yeah, easier said than done, apparently."

Pauling stopped a few feet away, jerking a thumb over her shoulder. "Out the door you two, truck's waiting. Shiloh, in two days you'll be getting a call - I can't be more specific than that unfortunately."

Shiloh blinked, a look of mild confusion on her face. "Two days? Why the delay? She wanted to speak to me immediately the last time."

Pauling shrugged and adjusted her glasses. "Considering what just happened and the power shift that's about to occur maybe she just wants to give you time to settle in and catch up, or decide where you're going to run, I can't really say...oh, but I don't suggest running, that would get messy."

"I wasn't planning on running, don't worry, but time to set- oh hell, she's already trying to get the upper hand, isn't she?" she interrupted herself, looking between Engineer and Sniper.

They both answered with a muttered "yep" and Shiloh pinched the bridge of her nose. "All right, that's fine...maybe she's going to pitch the job offer again. And it's just a phone call, it shouldn't be as immediately deadly as facing robot hordes, or tangling with a killer robot in a mineshaft, or running after a Spybot."

"Not immediately, but good luck all the same," Engineer said with a chuckle and a smile, patting her shoulder again before striding away behind Pauling and Sniper.

"Yeah, um...see you guys," Shiloh called after them weakly, before taking a deep breath and heading over to Alexei and Yuri.

* * *

The mechanical fingers twitched then slowly curled into a fist, the joints clicking softly as they moved; Engineer made the mental note to oil them again but their smooth movement meant the sensor sleeve was finally getting sensitive enough to pick up on the more subtle and delicate movements of the muscles further up his arm and translate them properly into a controlled movement. At this rate maybe he and Medic would finally be at a point where they could finalize all the variables for movement and then be free to begin designing a method through which tactile sensory information could be implemented - Engineer really needed a way to tell how hard he was gripping things, if the ridiculous amount of snapped pencils laying in a pile on his workbench was any indication, as well as being able to tell what he was touching.

He straightened the metal fingers and then curled them in a few times more, just to see if their previous movement had been only a fluke, then he (somewhat clumsily) used a screwdriver to close the tiny access panel on the back of his new hand before he leaned back and stretched; his back was aching, he was sweating, and he was hungry - there was no telling how long he'd sat hunched over here working on this thing, though he could see through the tiny window that it was dark now and it had been late afternoon when he'd started. It was probably beyond supper time at this point, but maybe-

"Hey egghead, you got a phone call."

Scout's sudden intrusion into the silence of his workshop made Engineer jump a bit; the younger man didn't even stick around, having only stuck his head into the room long enough to shout at (and startle) Engineer before retreating to...wherever, probably the training room to run a few miles on one of the treadmills.

Dinner would have to wait until after his phone call, and as he got up and headed down the hall to the main office of the base he had to wonder at who would be calling him and why - it could be Pauling or the Administrator, but they wouldn't really have any good reasons to be calling for him specifically, they normally addressed everyone at once...

The desk chair squeaked as he dropped into it and picked up the handset. "Hello?"

"Hey stranger," came the voice on the other end. "How are things coming along?"

Engineer had to pause a moment and let what he was hearing process. "...Shiloh?"

"Mmhmm. I have to make this quick, I'm needed elsewhere, but - I'm going to need you back here on the 17th, I already cleared it with the Administrator and you'll have travel time excused as well. Bring a truck, and park behind the club...I've found a few things I think you're going to want to keep."

"W- ...what are you going on about now?"

There was a quick bit of laughter. "What, did I wake you up? Is there even a time zone difference there?"

"Don't you make fun of me, missy. Haven't heard a damn thing out of you for over a month, and now you're wanting me back in Vegas? What's going on?"

"I'll tell you when you get here, I don't have the time for it at the moment - I'm not in trouble or danger or duress, or...more bad words, whatever. Just be here by the 17th, have a truck with you. Easy, right?"

Engineer opened his mouth to reply then shut it with an audible thunk as he heard in the background someone opening a door with a 'sorry ma'am but they're not going to wait long.' Shiloh sighed into the phone and her voice got quieter as she directed her words toward whoever had just walked into the room she was in "Yeah I heard you the first time, just a second."

Her voice came back full volume. "I have to go...figures I do nothing all day but the moment I sit down to make a call suddenly I'm needed in four different places. See you on the 17th, Dell."

"Y-yeah, I guess I'll see you then."

With a soft click the line went dead and he lowered the phone down into its cradle, starting to drum his fingers against the desk.

To say he was surprised would be a massive understatement; as he'd said, it'd been over a month since they'd come back and settled back into the routine of robot slaughter. They'd had a couple days where they'd discussed Vegas here and there, mainly focused on tactics to be used if they ever found themselves fighting in tight quarters like those tunnels again (and, going forward, they'd decided everyone was required to have some sort of light source, whether it was a penlight like Spy's or a lighter in Pyro's case, on their person at all times).

Not much had been said about the people involved in that mess, though Engineer couldn't begin to imagine what his teammates might be thinking about it all. To be honest with himself, Shiloh had been on his mind a lot.

He couldn't help it, really; his lost hand was a constant reminder of what had happened, and that schematic Shiloh had sketched out for him was pinned to the wall of his workshop where he could easily see and reference it when he needed to. Sometimes he'd find himself hoping the Administrator hadn't been too harsh on her when one of those little reminders got his mind wandering, and now here he'd gotten a call from her out of the blue.

What could she want? She'd said she'd found things he'd want to keep and that he'd need a truck...his first thought was Victor, but then again both that Spybot and what they'd managed to find of Victor had been had been loaded into Miss Pauling's car and taken to God-knew-where, so that couldn't be it.

He hunted around in the desk drawers until he found a calendar; today was the 3rd, he had two weeks before he'd be paying her a visit - he wondered if he should even bother telling anyone where he was going.

* * *

Engineer had barely shifted the truck into Park when the back door of the club opened and Shiloh stepped out, with that man Yuri right on her heels.

She made a striking figure; she was dressed in a women's pantsuit, black with a white shirt, and even from here Engineer could see the slight bulge at her sides that implied a shoulder holster was under that unbuttoned jacket. Her hair was back to its natural reddish brown and was wound up in a bun with two ornamental hair sticks keeping it in place - it was such a far cry from the worn clothing and battered boots that he found himself staring a moment before he popped the truck door open and stepped out.

"Don't you look nice, you even got rid of the black."

She chuckled, pausing to put her hands on her hips (the jacket gapped open just far enough to reveal that yes, that was indeed a shoulder holster - one on each side, actually). "Amazing what clean clothes and regular meals do for you, eh? And it turns out they can strip dye out of your hair, especially if it's the cheap stuff I was stuck using." Her gaze flicked down and stopped on the mechanical hand and he could track that gaze as it slowly trailed up his arm, taking in the sensor sleeve. "How have you been? Looks like you've gotten a hand built and working."

He nodded, raising the mechanical hand up and slowly waggling the fingers. "It's getting there, needs some work still but it's far enough along that it functions."

She nodded and turned on a heel, Yuri smoothly stepping out of her way. "Let's get to it, then." Three sharp knocks on the door and it was opened from the inside, Shiloh turning to raise an eyebrow at him. "Coming?"

Engineer took a few steps forward, only to be stopped by Yuri's outstretched hand; it took a few breaths for him to realize what the man wanted and Engineer handed over the keys to the truck, Yuri shifting out of his way as he slid the keys into a pocket on his vest.

It took a moment or two for Engineer's eyes to adjust to the dimmer indoor lighting but he found himself following Shiloh to the stairs and heading down to the basement; when they reached the bottom she paused with a hand on the doorknob, looking beyond Engineer at Yuri. "I've got it from here, head back upstairs and see if Jiselle needs anything."

Yuri frowned and seemed about to say something but Shiloh simply stared at him and made a shooing motion with a hand; silently Yuri turned and headed back up the stairs at a light jog.

When he was out of earshot Shiloh's demeanor seemed to slightly change; she became less rigid, less..."businesslike," something Engineer hadn't consciously caught on to until just now, as the metaphorical mask fell away and she blew out a heavy breath.

"Sorry about that, I'm expected to...well, when I'm on the clock there's a certain behavior expected, and Yuri's my new official shadow now that the Madam's dead."

When she pushed the door open he was surprised to see the basement - or at least, the hallway he could see - had been changed: instead of linoleum there was plush carpet, there were round light fixtures in the ceiling that cast a more golden glow compared to the shop lights that had been down here previously. The doors down here were all standing open and Engineer could hear what he thought was someone working away on a typewriter somewhere, and as Shiloh led him by the first few doors he saw comfortable office spaces instead of the dungeon-like rooms that had been here before.

"Seems like it wasn't just your wardrobe that changed."

She laughed. "Yeah, Alexei was pretty damn adamant that any reminder of the Madam's uh..."hobbies" be erased. Plus, putting the offices down here opened up a few rooms on the top floor that can be rented out, so I guess it was a decent enough business move even if there wasn't a history of interrogation and torture down here."

She ducked into a room on their right and Engineer followed her in, Shiloh shutting the door behind them and leaning against it with another sigh. "All right, one second-"

He glanced around as she slipped the suit jacket off; there was carpeting and soft lighting in here too, along with a single desk with two chairs and a small bank of television screens set into the wall to the desk's right that displayed live security feeds of various places within the club upstairs. The room faintly smelled of coffee and something floral, and Shiloh moved around him to toss the jacket over the back of the desk chair before dropping into it.

"Well, how's everyone been?" she asked, smiling.

That looked more like the Shiloh he knew.

"We're all alive and in one piece," he chuckled, moving to settle into the chair across from her. "Back to business as usual, I suppose. How have YOU been?"

She gestured with a hand at the office. "Well, after my two days of catch up with Alexei, the Administrator called...and, like I suspected, she pitched a job offer. This time I took it."

He looked surprised at that. "You did? What'd she want out of you this time?"

The smile she gave him was a bit...sheepish? "Well..." she began slowly. "I'll come right out and say that I kind of wanted to hang on to you guys this time...I mean-" she added quickly, then stopped to rub at her face with her hands. "-I've been dragged into your business twice now, I'd rather not go three for three, and honestly I missed you all the first time."

Engineer chuckled at that, feeling his ears go a bit warm for some reason. "Aww, we made that big an impression on you?"

She shot him a look from between her fingers. "Yeah yeah, tease all you want, but I like you all. I wanted to keep you guys this time, so I went into that call with a mind to maybe talk my way into at least being able to keep in contact without getting threatened with a shallow grave. What actually happened was something I found agreeable right off the bat and I only had to talk my way into some tweaks here and there."

"Well don't keep me in suspense," he said, grinning as she paused.

She laughed. "All right, well, officially - or "officially" I guess," she said, making little air quotes around the word, "so far as anyone who isn't in TFI is concerned, I'm security detail here for now. Monkey suit, couple of pistols, make sure everyone stays on their best behavior." She slid a finger under the strap of the holster on her left shoulder and lightly snapped it against herself with a grin. "If I can tango with a Spybot I think I can handle a few rich drunk old farts who fall over at the sight of a drawn gun."

Engineer laughed at that, propping an elbow up on the armrest of his chair. "I think I'd pay good money to see that."

"Stay the night, there's one in every crowd," she said dryly, and he laughed again.

"All right, so you're a guard now," he said after a moment. "What's the 'unofficial' part of the job?"

Her tone went quiet and conspiratorial, and she leaned forward. "All right, brace yourself for this shock, ready? ...Alexei and the Administrator do not get along."

Engineer burst into another bout of laughter at that and she laughed along with him, her seriousness completely gone and eyes watering as she laughed.

"But seriously, they don't," she continued, rubbing the back of a hand against her cheek to dab away the moisture there. "So! Unofficially, I'm sort of a middleman when it comes to communication - and that includes you guys too."

"Us? What about us?"

"I'm sort of a back up Pauling," Shiloh replied, waving a hand idly. "It's - all right, if you ever can't get ahold of Miss Pauling? You call me, and I'll get whatever's needed taken care of. Additionally, I'll be handling all your personal stuff: letters, packages, that sort of thing. The Administrator was wanting to free Miss Pauling's time up some for some sort of project and she needed something in place for those times Pauling's working on THAT and isn't available. So you guys get me in those times where you don't have Miss Pauling, and I'm also the peacekeeper between Alexei and the Administrator."

He mulled that over for a few minutes. "...sounds like you got a good deal this time."

She nodded. "I get to keep family, get to keep you guys, and as a condition for me taking the job I can travel anywhere I please providing I'm always able to be contacted - I'm not trapped here if I don't want to be."

"Anyway," she said into the pause that followed, "come around here, here's what I ACTUALLY wanted you here for."

Engineer got up and came around the side of the desk, Shiloh wheeling her chair back; the desk, while it had a solid-looking front, didn't actually have drawers or much of anything underneath it - it was all open, a big open box essentially, and under it was a wooden crate that was about three feet long, two feet wide, and a foot deep.

"What's that?" he asked, eying the crate.

"Turns out Miss Pauling didn't get ALL of Victor."

His eyes went wide. "That there is Victor? You found the copy of him?"

She grinned at him witih a nod. "Zane was using one of the Madam's computers down here, and while the Administrator sent in people to dismantle that machine of his down in the Underground, the stuff of his that was left inside the club was pretty much ignored."

Engineer dropped down to his knees and reached to tug the crate closer and lift the lid; inside, carefully packed, were the innards of a computer. "How'd you... Did they not notice a computer was gutted?"

"Don't worry about it, it's taken care of," she replied quietly. "Just, when or even if you rebuild him, tell him I said thank you?"

He let out a sort of disbelieving chuckle, more air than actual sound, and carefully slid the crate's lid back into place. "You...are really something. And thanks - I'm pretty dang happy to get him back. He'll have to wait until I get my hand working the way I want it to, but even still-"

Nudging the crate back into place he used the edge of the desk to pull himself back to his feet. "-you know, now that I'm here I remember Zane saying he'd copied Victor, but when Pauling took Victor's scrap and then I didn't get a chance to go looking myself..."

"I completely forgot about it," Shiloh said, moving to perch on the edge of the desk, facing him. "I was a little more concerned with us getting out of here in one piece, it was the uh...the man Alexei has on staff who keeps all the machinery around here running who technically 'found' Victor."

"However it happened I'm glad for it...you aren't getting in trouble for this, are you?"

She shook her head. "Nope, so don't worry about it."

He chuckled and smiled, then ambled back around the desk to stand next to the chair he'd vacated minutes before. "...well, now what?"

"I figured you wouldn't want to turn around and drive back immediately so I was thinking dinner and then you can pick from the rooms upstairs, spend the night. There's a jazz group performing tonight and I basically inherited the Madam's personal booth, so there's that too if you like live music."

"Dinner and music," he mused, ears going a bit red again. "Now I'm doubly glad I didn't tell anyone where I was going."

She raised an eyebrow at him. "Dell, if I was angling for a dinner date I'd hope it would be somewhere my dad isn't."

"Doesn't mean someone wouldn't take that information and run a country mile with it."

"I'm aware - if you recall Mundy and I were under similar suspicions," she replied dryly. "It's not like I haven't heard it before."

She grabbed her jacket and slipped it on, settling it over the holsters, then headed to the door and led the way back out of the basement and upstairs, skirting along the outer edge of a large dining room; there was a stage at the far end with a small area cleared for dancing, and the aforementioned jazz group were setting up their equipment.

There was a row of booths against the wall that faced the stage directly and Shiloh led the way to the one that was in the exact middle of the row, sliding aside the little lace privacy curtain and sitting down with Engineer sliding across from her.

"As a thank you for carrying my ass through those tunnels, dinner's on me tonight," she said with a grin. "What are you drinking?"

He returned the grin. "Guess that depends on what you've got."

* * *

"Status report?"

"Our agent was killed in action, nothing was recovered."

"As I imagined would be the end result, but I suppose one can't be blamed for trying. Proceed as planned, we'll just have to do this the hard way."


End file.
